


Where the Pieces Intersect

by Ang1x



Category: Bionicle - All Media Types, Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon Continuation, Canon-Typical Violence, Other, Relationships aren't listed (something something romance isn't canon), Will maybe add more characters as they come, aside from a couple of rules shifted about a bit, the epilogues
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-20
Updated: 2019-09-02
Packaged: 2020-05-15 03:05:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 30,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19286842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ang1x/pseuds/Ang1x
Summary: "All endings are merely beginnings, waiting to be born."Words which had once echoed the rebirth of Mata Nui now promise a dying John Egbert a fate worse than death. Meanwhile, the people of the Matoran Universe continue their search for the Great Beings, but will soon find the ancient scientists have plans far greater than they could have imagined.





	1. Dead Meat part 1: Meat Your Maker

**Author's Note:**

> First off, a guide. This story is structured in a similar fashion to Bionicle's multiple concurrent serials. That is to say, if one chapter is part of a particular series of chapters, that series is the only reading required to understand that chapter, unless stated otherwise.
> 
> Second, an apology. I've chosen not to use archive warnings for two reasons. First, so as to not spoil the transpiring of certain events. Second, so that one could not extrapolate from them the wrong impression prior to reading this foreword. There is material some readers may find distressing, at certain points. I myself often found much of it to be distressing while writing and proofreading it. Still, it's included because I consider it thematically relevant to one or both sources, as well as narratively important and fitting enough for its situation/character/plotline to the point where its inclusion only made sense. Bear in mind, though, that many of the issues this content addresses is drawn from my own experience (because I understand the gravitas that comes with these topics, and I wouldn't *dare* address them if I didn't understand them). I'd rather not say to what extent, because I very, very badly do not want anyone's pity, but I say that because I want to make it absolutely clear that none of this story comes from a place of insincerity, or worse, some kind of perversion. That said, if you could, in fact, stomach the issues, concepts, themes, and events presented in Homestuck's epilogues and Bionicle's Ignition trilogy, you should be fine.
> 
> Finally, a thank you. This is a story I've been tinkering away at for years now, and I'm absolutely honoured that you're deciding to read it. It means more to me than I can say, since this, as the previous paragraph might have implied, is a very very deeply personal love letter to two series which have changed my life forever.
> 
> Hope you enjoy! <3  
> -Ang1x

Long ago, in a universe which no longer exists, there was an island. The people of this island faced constant hardship, be it through famine and flood, or through the crossfire of warring factions in the shadows. And yet for every disaster which struck them, they pushed through. No matter the cost, no matter the odds.

These people continually reinvented themselves, stronger each time, and ready for whatever might come next. Their leaders coined an expression, a mantra, which served as a lesson for the young and a reminder for the world-weary, who fell into despair when they felt the weight of catastrophe to be unbearable:

"All endings are merely beginnings, waiting to be born."

As simple as a philosophy it might seem to some, and as unrealistic as it might to others, these people took it to heart, and pushed through anything which might come their way. Even the Great Spirit who watched over them repeated it to himself, they would say, wherever in the universe he may be.

 

There existed another universe, so different to the first that the two were beyond the imagination of any inhabitant of the other. This universe was a universe in the more conventional sense, a vast cosmos filled with trillions of stars and planets. The people of this universe had never heard such a sentiment, as their world was locked in an endless cycle where the past and the future were one and the same.

This was about to change.

This world had heroes of its own, who faced their own struggles. Many of them had lost everything in the name of their destiny. One particular hero had only learned to live as he had begun to die.

This hero had been prepared to lay down anything he could for his friends, and he had. His fate had stripped of him his family, his home, his livelihood, and now it demanded his life. He was prepared to accept this end. He had always suspected his sacrifice would take his life.

 

However, all endings are merely beginnings, waiting to be born.

 

* * *

The cosmos, John feared, was more than unfair.

 

Ten years ago, he had narrowly survived the destruction of the planet Earth. For the next three years of his life, he had been repeatedly wounded, maimed, traumatised, and sometimes even killed in the name of a destiny he barely even knew he had. Now here he laid dying, on another Earth from another universe, gradually having drifted apart from his surviving friends to become a miserable young man who knew that he would never truly be satisfied with his life. He had realised this long ago, and it was crushing at the time, but to know that now, as he lay dying, was totally devastating.

 

The cosmos, John feared, was more than unfair. It was cruel.

 

He looked up into the burnt-out eyes of Terezi Pyrope, the most beautiful girl he'd ever met, and wished with everything he could that she had stayed around longer, so that he wouldn't have to say goodbye so soon after their reunion… what, a couple of days ago? She wept tears of mourning for him already, as both of them knew by now that his fate was sealed permanently at this point. He forced a smile, even though it hurt like hell. For at least a couple minutes longer, he was still with her. He wanted to tell her all this. He so badly wanted to be able to speak, but breathing alone was beyond excruciating. He decided he could give her a few words more. She deserved at least that much.

"Terezi, you know," He managed, before hacking up a quantity of blood he didn't know he still had, "I think… I really lo-"

"Don't you dare," she growled, her voice shaking.

"I… r- really lov-"

"Don't you dare fucking die on me in the middle of a love co-"

What would be their final moment together was violently interrupted by a two metre tall humanoid comprised of black and silver metal emerging from a vortex of dark gas and plasma which had suddenly formed by John's feet. He had a large gash along his neck, and carried a silver shield coated in teal blood in his right hand. The figure jumped upon seeing them. When he opened his mouth, he spoke in a language of metallic groans and beeps. Somehow, the two understood him perfectly. They were too astonished to move a muscle.

"Oh dear! I forgot you were dying. I really should have gotten to you first." His mouth twisted into a smile, showing off a set of massive, jagged teeth. He lifted John up with his free, clawed hand. "You know, I really hate to do this. Sadly, though, while the Hero of Breath's significance ends here, adventure still calls him in yet another reality. Mine, specifically."

"Wait! Don't take him! Please, let me stay with him until the end, he's dying!" Terezi pleaded. In any other situation, she would have been overcome by confusion and hostility with a development like this, but the prospect of losing John again, before the end, was too much to bear.

"Don't worry, Pyrope," the metallic being assured her in a surprisingly threatening tone, "You're coming too."

 

With that, the vortex gaped, and drew all three of them within. When the dark haze cleared, they found themselves situated in a cave brightly lit by dozens of candles, directly in front of a shocked looking cyclops. It was built of what seemed to be the same metal as their kidnapper, but in a dull yellow. The former handed John to the latter, who slowly, reluctantly, and with more than a little annoyance, took him and began looking him over.

"Wh- what's going on?" Terezi stammered. "What are you doing to him? Where are we? Who are you?"

"Haha!" The silver being laughed triumphantly, as if he had just defeated a powerful enemy rather than having simply been talked to. Both were about equally rare, in his experience. "I see I have a fellow fan of large quantities of questions over here! If there's one thing I love, it's demanding that the people who kidnap me explain absolutely everything.

Okay, let's go through them one by one. What's going on? Hm, pretty broad, no idea how to answer that one. I know that I shouldn't have told you not to worry earlier, though. You should definitely worry. A lot, actually. Sorry. If I'm honest, it would have been a lot nicer to just have let him die. Less painful that way, really. Far, far less painful. For both of you. Um… What are we doing to him? Well, I'm hanging back. I'd just get in the way. My friend here, though, is removing the poison from that big nasty wound. Yeowch! Not even going to ask how you got it." The cyclops, now holding John's arms out, seemed to growl at being called a friend. The being before Terezi didn't seem to notice, though. "Where are we? In a cave, presumably. This looks like a cave to you righ-"

"Yeah."

"Yeah, it's a cave. Or is it a cavern? I can never remember the difference. That doesn't matter, though! Who are we? I am Vezon," he posed dramatically (or at least, what he considered to be dramatic), "the great, the mighty, the powerful, the invincible! Just Vezon for short. Tall, yellow, and grumpy over here is Keetongu."

 

This didn't answer anything. But before Terezi could ask any follow-up questions, he vanished as quickly as he had appeared.


	2. The Yesterday Quest part 4: Where We Left Off

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's only a natural consequence of trying to follow up an unfinished story like The Yesterday Quest that I'd have to continue it, to see it through to its ending. It's been, what? Eight years? Nine? So really this chapter is more of a kind-of recap than anything else.

Zaria pushed against the wall of his small cell, feeling desperately for a weak point, or anything that might allow him to break through.

The room was small and dark, its walls and floor stained with something that resembled the red fluids which coursed through his organic tissue, although it was clearly not the same substance.

“I see you don’t give up so easily,” Chiara sighed.

“I’m terrified, Chiara. You should be too.”

“I am! I’m terrified beyond belief! I can’t believe that… well, that this is how we die.”

Zaria flinched at the word ‘die’. “Come on, there has to be some way out. There’s always a way out.”

“You’ve checked that wall already. Twice. I checked it too.”

Zaria slumped down, defeated. “Then what are we supposed to do? I didn’t survive the genocide of the iron Toa just to die here.”

Chiara looked down. “I don’t know. But for what it’s worth, I’m sorry to hear about what happened to your people. I can’t imagine what it must have been like.”

Zaria smiled, although there was no feeling to it. “Thanks. I get condolences aren't something you offer lightly.”

She simply nodded. “That’s why I’m here, isn’t it? Because if we were to fail our mission like we have, I wouldn’t be missed.”

Zaria thought about it. He furrowed his brow and took a deep breath. That didn’t sound right, but he couldn’t argue against it.

Chiara continued speaking. “That’s why they picked us. I never found unity with any of the other Vo-Matoran, or with any other Toa. In killing a Makuta, even though it wasn’t by choice, you failed your duty.”

The Toa of iron winced at that. His counterpart kept speaking, though.

“And in turning the Zyglak into what they are today, I suppose Orde left his destiny unfulfilled. We’ve each turned away from the paramount virtues Mata Nui entrusted to us. In the eyes of some, I’m sure that makes us expendable.”

A silence fell upon the cell for a while, until Zaria broke it.

“I never wanted to be a Toa.”

“I don’t think anyone does. What were you doing before you became a Toa?”

“I was an inspector, in a shipyard on my home island. Hardly the kind of experience that makes one worthy of becoming a Toa, but… I suppose for some reason, it made me good enough for the job. Destiny is inscrutable sometimes. What about you?”  
“Oh, I was the adventurous type from day one. It got me into all kinds of trouble. It happened to me around seven thousand years ago. A Toa of fire - Dume, his name was - thought that learning the duty of a Toa would make me more responsible. He said I had the potential to be a great protector of my village. He was right, of course, but if I ever met him again, I wouldn’t tell him that.”

Zaria nodded. Again, the room went quiet, neither of them knowing what to say.

“Well, it’s been an honour to meet you, Chiara.”

The Toa of lightning nodded absentmindedly in acknowledgement.

* * *

Orde sighed and ran a hand up his mask in exasperation. He was a Toa of Psionics, the first of his kind. Today, he and three other Toa, each a biomechanical warrior of great power, had been sent on a mission to seek the Great Beings. Who these Great Beings were had only ever been speculated on in the most ancient of legends, until the recent discovery that they were scientists who had built Orde and all those like him, and the many lands they came from. Their quest had only just begun, and already the other two had been kidnapped by ancient warriors who sought to hunt them for sport. Only Orde and Gelu, their organic companion on their journey, had made it out.

“We’ve got to go back,” he said at last.

“We can’t,” Gelu grimaced, “and besides, what help could we possibly be? If Chiara and Zaria haven’t managed to escape and catch up with us, I doubt all four of us together could fare much better against… them.” He gestured to Kabrua, who had turned to leave. Neither of them needed to say that he was going to be back, and that whatever he would be bringing with him wouldn’t be something the two of them could take on.

The Toa chuckled sadly. “So this is it, then.”

“Only if you maintain that you won’t kill them.”

“I am many things. My hundred-millennia lifetime of battle and bloodshed ensured as much, but I am not a killer.”

Gelu nodded. “Always admired a principled warrior.”

“Thank y-”

“So I suppose that does make you unique, in that category. Nothing personal, of course, but we’re both going to die because of it.”

Orde scowled. “Trust me, Gelu. If I had the inclination to kill another intelligent being, I would have defied my duty and conquered my universe long ago. To you, my principles may seem like a hindrance, but the way I see it, they keep me in check.”

Gelu sighed. He couldn’t argue with that. He barely understood the concept of 'duty' in the way Orde used it to begin with. He knew the Toa was right, though. Supposedly, he was an incredibly powerful and violent Toa. It must have been adherence to his strict moral code that kept him in line with the wishes of Mata Nui.

Whatever happened to Mata Nui, anyway? Gelu had known him as a proud and annoyingly idealistic warrior who had come from another world, which had turned out to be the world Orde was from? Or… Mata Nui somehow _was_ that world? He didn't know. He didn't understand how that could be the case.

“Now, if you don’t mind," Orde interrupted that train of thought, "I’ve managed to probe the minds of some of the wildlife here. They know of a nearby river with thick underbrush, perfect for hiding from predators. For them,” he gestured in the direction of the river, “and with any luck, for us.”

Gelu nodded. Although he would never admit it, he was terrified. He had never been any more than a bodyguard for Orde and his friends. Now the two of them were on the run from Vorox. Vorox! Vorox who can think and speak like Agori, Vorox who hunted Glatorian as revenge for hunting their bestial kin in the desert.

Orde hopped down from the tree onto the jungle soil below. Gelu joined him, albeit with a rougher landing. By the time he was on his feet, the Toa was already walking off towards the river.

“So what’s the plan?” Gelu whispered.

“We wait a few days. We stick around until the Vorox give up hunting us. Then, we head back to the desert. We walk to New Atero, and we call this whole thing off. Pretend it never happened. I’m sure we can find our disguised Great Being on our own.”

“You’re joking, surely?”

Orde waved a hand dismissively. “Of course not. We don’t stand a chance. These Vorox… they have tech from a Great Being. We can’t possibly compare to it.”

“And you’re just going to leave your friends behind?”

“They’re not my friends. I know them as well as you do. Besides, Zaria is a disgrace. He’s killed someone. His life isn’t worth anything anymore. I merely wanted to save them so that we could all turn around and leave Bota Magna. But if you refuse to fight off the Vorox, I’m not going to stand a chance by myself.”

Gelu grabbed Orde’s shoulder, forcing him to turn around.

“Look at me, Toa,” he growled. “I don’t care if you consider the others worthless, or what, but you saw what that tiny device did to your elemental powers. Tell me you’re not absolutely fascinated by whatever other secrets the Great Beings might have in store for us.”

Orde threw the hand off. “You want to talk about secrets? You want to talk about technology beyond imagination? You have no idea what life inside the Matoran Universe was like. You never met a forsaken people grown out of failed Krana, whose skin burned through metal and whose tools turned all they struck to dust. You never saw conquerors in the shadows, whose essence of gas and darkness birthed every creature that walked or swam or flew. Your mind was never gnawed at by the presence of an overzealous mass of pink and red flesh fused to an island hundreds of kio away, insistent that it should have been the one to rule the world. You have no idea what I’ve seen, Gelu, and you tell me you want to see where all this comes from?!?”

“Yes, actually. I do. I’ve retired as a fighter. Now I’m a hired muscle for travelers wandering through Bone Hunter territory. And now that they’ve lost the support of the Skrall, and that New Atero is undergoing construction, I’m not even that. We’re on the path to the greatest possible mystery you could imagine, and you want me to turn away. I can’t accept that.”

Orde shook his head and resumed walking. “If you want to dream so badly, you can die dreaming for all I care. If you come to your senses, though, you can come with me.”

Gelu clenched his fists and cursed under his breath. Still, though, he followed Orde’s lead. A fight with Kabrua and his entourage was beyond unappealing, to say the least.


	3. Derse Dreamers part 1: Painted Red

Kanaya Maryam stood on the edge of a cliff, overlooking a crystal blue sea. Her wife, Rose Lalonde, stood a few metres back. When Kanaya turned to face her, she discovered Rose was holding a phone up. She walked away from the cliff, to her.

 

The two had just been taken from their house by a tall, robotic being with black and silver armour. Both were too surprised and confused at the time to be terrified, but now that he had left, both of them were silently worried about what this might mean for them. It was not that neither was too proud or too shy to admit this concern to the other. Rather, it was that they both knew that the other was equally disoriented, and that they both knew that they both knew this.

 

"Do you have a signal out here?" Kanaya asked.

"No," Rose chuckled, "I just wanted to take a photo of your hair with the wind through it." She showed her. Kanaya would have called it ridiculous, but Rose seemed to look at the photo with sincere affection. "You know, I've got a breathtaking view from out here."

Kanaya flashed a smile out at the horizon across the ocean. "Yes. It is rather pretty, isn't it?"

"Sure, but that's not the one I mean. I mean of our reality. We're not in it anymore."

Kanaya blinked. "What do you mean? Is this a different universe, or-"

"More than that," Rose finished that thought for her, "All of the universes that we travelled to were woven into the fabric of Paradox Space, a vacuum devoid of even the linear dimensions which defined those universes. I can see it all, now, and it's… for lack of a better term, far away."

"So how do we get back?"

"I'm not sure. The number of timelines which, in some way or another, resemble our own is far too high to count. I would guess it’s in the tens of millions. Maybe even hundreds of millions. It’s impossible to be sure. I can’t see us returning to any of them, even though that’s no indication of an impossible feat. I’ll keep looking.”

“So… sorry if this is a stupid question, but if we’re not in our own reality, where are we? Do we know where it is all…” she swung her arms in vast, sweeping gestures, “this is?”

Rose got That Look in her eye. Kanaya pretended to hate The Look, but they both knew she thought it was the most enchanting thing in the world. Rose would give an enthusiastic, intense stare, every time she was just about to deliver the real point of something she was passionate about explaining.

"Not in the slightest. That's just the thing, though. I don’t think we *can* know just yet. Every session and universe we’ve been to, even the furthest ring and the Green Sun, that was all part of Paradox Space. And we’re not there anymore. This is purely alien territory."

“Then why does it look so much like our home planets?”

"Excellent question. I’m sure we’ll find out soon enough.”

“What makes you so sure?”

Rose paused for a second, and the corner of her mouth curled into a smile. “That much, I’m *not* sure about. For now, though, maybe we can relax. What’s more, whatever mechanism was causing me to experience those headaches all those months ago, before John refused his mission… I’m sure that when it let up, it let up for good, but what’s strange about it is that I can feel its absence. The rules of ‘canon’ and ‘non-canon’ mean nothing here.”

Kanaya smiled. “I’m very happy to hear that, actually. Shall we look around?”

Rose looked up and down the coast. “You know what? That would be delightful. You always wanted to live by the sea, didn’t you?”

Kanaya blushed a little as she nodded. “I only spent a few weeks on Loraf, but it made me realise what it was I had been missing out on for so long, growing up in the desert.”

Rose started walking parallel to the coastline, Kanaya staying by her side. “I can see why you’d like it. I, for one, have always been fascinated by whatever it was that lied beneath. A world shaped by such different pressures and temperatures than those on the surface. You know, for centuries, the bottom of the deepest seas had been shrouded in mystery and superstition. Some said it was a hostile place, inhabited by the strangest creatures.”

“Zoologically dubious, perhaps?”

Rose laughed. “Oh, of course.”

* * *

 Dave Strider found himself being shaken awake by a strange black and silver… android? Cyborg? He couldn't remember which was which. It was definitely one of those, though.

"Wake up! You need- Oh, wonderful! You're awake!" He spoke a language Dave hadn't heard in a long time, and couldn't remember where he'd heard it last. Dave looked around in a daze. He was in the middle of the jungle, which was weird. Weirder still was the fact that he was already dressed for work.

"Hold on, let me explain a few things first." The and…borg…? dropped Dave and put a hand to his own face, as if deep in thought. "Alright. So, my name's Vezon, you're on a planet called Spherus Magna, in a jungl- oh hey, I've been here before!" He looked around, and saw a deceptively primitive-looking structure in the distance. His face fell. "I've been… *now*… before." He fell silent.

Dave blinked and furrowed his brow. This was weird as hell. Had he been drinking last night? No, of course he hadn't! Today was a really important day, for a reason he couldn't remember. Was this even a thing that could happen after having some drinks? He needed answers. Something was very, very wrong.

"What." Was all he could manage to ask.

Vezon snapped back into the moment. "Oh, right! Yes! Basically, that building's rigged with explosives. Don't go near it. Stay back here with your friend. By the way, here are your sunglasses." He handed Dave his trademark aviators and vanished into thin air.

Dave put his sunglasses on. His… friend? Did he mean Karkat? After all, the two were best friends. Maybe more than that. Dave remembered what he was going to do today. It was definitely more than that. He looked around for his number one guy, his favourite dude, his best bro, but couldn't see him anywhere. What he could see, however, was a short, colourfully dressed humanoid with a white shell covering her entire body. Dave recognised her as a Prospitian, a person from the kingdom of light. He didn't recognise her specifically, though.

She, however, did. He could tell this because she was pointing a revolver at his face. When she spoke, it was with a thick New York accent. "It's a pleasure to finally meetcha, mister Strider. Hands where I can see them."

He followed her instruction wordlessly. Did Prospit have a New York? He asked himself. He almost kicked himself for thinking of such useless questions.

"I've been waitin' a long time for this day, you know."

"Wh- why's that?" He stammered.

She laughed. "'Cause I gets to get my revenge, of course! I gets to shoot ya!"

He panicked. "Why do you wanna shoot me? Actually, let's take a step back. What's going on?"

"You ain't got no idea what youse've done, huh?"

He shook his head.

"You killed my goddamn fiancée, is what you did!"

Dave gulped. He couldn't remember killing anyone. He knew that to ask his next question was to tempt fate, but he needed to know. "…Who?"

"Who? Who?!?" She spat. "Are you a fuckin' owl or some shit, or do ya really not keep track of what I assume must be a fuckin' trail a' victims?"

"Really!" He was almost crying now. "Really, I don't remember killing someone! What are you talking about?"

"I'm talkin' 'bout a man named Spades Slick. Ring a damn bell?"

He shook his head again.

"Round 'bout your height. Ruggedly handsome. Beautiful deep voice…"

He kept shaking his head.

"Wearin' an eyepatch and a fedora, half his body made a' metal,"

Oh fuck.

Oh.

Fuck.

"Yeah. I remember him."

She beamed. "Alright! Cool! Anyways, guess I'm gonna kill ya now."

* * *

 Vezon had had enough. Here he was, face to face with a creator of his beautiful, terrible universe, and he couldn’t even say a word to him over the sound of the mightiest beings his world had ever known, squabbling like Gukko birds about what to do with him. It was time for him to step in.

“Be quiet!” Vezon demanded, pushing apart the impossibly powerful Makuta Miserix and the revered Artakha, as if they were no more than a pair of Matoran traders arguing over their prices. The room fell silent in awe of Vezon’s bravery. Only Brutaka recognised that he had done so out of either ignorance or insanity, but he did not care about what happened to the Great Being enough to argue in the first place.

“Look,” Vezon began, addressing the room as if he thought he were the centre of attention (as he had done many times in the past, but only now was he right about it), “I know we don’t always get along,”

“We’ve never gotten along,” Tuyet interjected, “I was prepared to fight practically everyone in this room for control over the universe at some point. Are you crying?”

“No!” Snapped Vezon, far too quickly. “Let’s put aside our differences. Where we come from, we’re all mighty warriors, influential leaders, figures of legend… those… two Matoran…” Kapura waved, before the half-Skakdi continued rambling, “but this isn’t the world we come from. Look at our friend here, he’s a Great Being! To him, what are we? We’re all just lifeless machinery,”

“That’s not true,” the Great Being interrupted,

“making pointless, irritating noises,” Vezon continued, hand raised as a gesture of not wanting to be distracted.

“No, I understand that you need time to-”

“in a building rigged with explosives.”

“What?!?” the Great Being shouted. Everyone else expressed similar concern.

“You… didn’t notice? None of you noticed?” Vezon sighed. “Alright, let me show you.”

In an instant, the matter that comprised Vezon’s body impossibly seemed to pull into itself and fall away out of reality. Much of the room seemed to throw itself inwards in an implosion, not of matter or energy, but of the very space that comprised it. All of the room’s biomechanical beings were pulled in alongside it, and found themselves standing atop a nearby cliff, looking down upon the chamber.

Miserix growled. “Some kind of trick, Skakdi? How are we supposed to see the explosives from here?”

His question was punctuated by the chamber violently erupting into a cloud of smoke and flame, the trees around it shattering to splinters and ash. A flock of bizarre-looking birds scattered, calling loudly and hurriedly. Everyone recoiled in shock with the exception of Vezon.

“Oh, sorry. I could take you closer, if you’d like. Maybe there’s still a bomb or two that didn’t go off.”

Axonn ignored him. “He was still in there.”

Tuyet looked around. “So what do we do now?”

Helryx shrugged. “I’m not entirely sure. So much has changed in the past few hours.” She turned to Artakha. "Surely you must have a plan? You knew the Great Beings. What did they have in mind once Mata Nui’s destiny was fulfilled?”

Artakha raised an eyebrow. “What makes you sure that his destiny is fulfilled?”

“I paid attention in that chamber down there. The walls had carvings detailing the history of Spherus Magna and the importance of reforming its jungle and its desert with the ocean of our world. And I can feel the ocean's presence. After all, I was built long before they worked out how sensitive to make us Toa to our respective elements. It’s many mio away, but it’s there.”

Artakha started to say something, but Hafu butted in, holding onto a dazed Kapura who was still visibly shaken from being grabbed by the wall.

“What carvings? What destiny? Something was written on the wall, but everything I saw looked as if it had faded millennia ago.”

“Quiet, Matoran,” Tuyet snapped, “where I come from, your kind knows not to-”

Miserix activated his power of silence, and Tuyet’s voice disappeared. She was enraged by this, but knew better than to pick a fight here and now.

“My mask allows me to see the history of any object I touch. With this power, I discovered that the Great Beings’ planet had been destroyed, and Mata Nui’s destiny lied in repairing it.”

“So what does that mean for us, now?” Kapura wondered.

“That’s what we’re trying to work out. All of us still have duties to carry on, or destinies to fulfill. Well, everyone except-” Helryx turned to face Vezon, but he was nowhere to be seen.

“That’s not good, is it?” Hafu winced.

* * *

Ms. Paint pulled the trigger just as the shockwave of the exploding building bowled her over, leaving her to miss her target entirely. Dave swiftly swiped the gun from her hand, apologised quickly and breathlessly, and ran off in the opposite direction. He had no idea where he was headed. It didn't matter. He just had to leave, this was totally insane. What had happened last night? He remembered something… something he was doing in the bathroom. He was looking in the mirror for some reason, holding something.

_ The night before, Dave put it down next to the sink cabinet and scowled at himself in the mirror. No, he decided, his current appearance wasn't making this any easier. What was he doing wrong? He looked way too uptight. Too intense, maybe? Yeah, he guessed. That must have been it. He ran a hand through his hair, to the top of his head, and shook it up. Now it was back to its usual unkempt self, but it looked forced. Like he didn't actually want to do this. No, he thought. In truth, he had never wanted to do anything more in his life. He was aware of the cost, aware of what he'd have to sacrifice, but he didn't care. _

In the present, Dave kept running through the jungle. He wasn't going to look back, he decided. That would only slow him down, assuming he was being followed in the first place. He needed to think harder. He could barely remember what had happened next.

_ He undid his tie, and put it on the side of the sink cabinet. This shit was real, not some business decision for some detached, number crunching beaurocrat. Did he even need to wear a tie in the first place? He really didn't like it. He took another look in the mirror. Yet again, he hadn't even come close to making the point he wanted to. This was bullshit. He sucked at this. If anything, he looked like a total douchebag. He didn't want to change the world looking like a douchebag. _

_ He sighed. Had it really come to this? He didn't see any other option. _

Dave didn't even slow down when the trees and ferns grew thicker and thicker, to the point of almost obstructing his path. He pushed every branch and leaf out of his way, scratching his arms and hands terribly in the process. He didn't even know why he was still running. Once he reached the next clearing, he slowed to a halt.

_ Dave looked at the tie to his right, and the script to his left. He supposed he could recite it from memory now. After all, he had become a much more confident speaker in the last few months. Not by choice, but if he were still the same shy, rambling kid he was ten years ago, then he couldn't have done any of this. He certainly couldn't do what he had to do tomorrow. He removed his sunglasses and put them by his tie. For a second, he was almost afraid to look in the mirror, but he quickly realised he was being ridiculous. _

_ He looked at his own reflection. He was, by all accounts, a normal dude. He didn't know why it made him so happy to think that. Was that really the effect that he was going for? Normal dude? _

_ Of course it was. What he was imagining before was more of that toxic masculinity bullshit he had spent the past seven years unlearning. This was something only a normal dude could do. He reached into his left pocket, carefully feeling the object he had stored in there. No, he corrected himself. This was something only Dave Strider could do. Tomorrow, he was going to- _

A loud roar echoed out overhead. Dave looked up, slowly, trembling in fear. Looming over him was a creature resembling a large, carnivorous dinosaur, decked out with metallic armour and machinery and weaponry far beyond anything Earth C's most ambitious scientists had ever dreamed up.

Oh fuck.


	4. The Powers That Be part 5: That Which Came Before

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TPTB is one of my favourite Bionicle stories, even though it was never finished. Trying to continue it for the purpose of this fic has been a lot of fun. Hopefully it continues the story in a satisfying way!

Kopaka stayed close behind Mavrah, constantly looking over his shoulder to make sure Pohatu was still there. He wanted, more than anything else right now, to ensure that he didn’t lose him here.

“Not much further,” the Onu-Matoran insisted. “There are certain back alleys of this place which even the Kestora dare not go.”

“What’s a Kestora?” Pohatu asked.

“Oh! Those purple beings who show no emotion. You see, the reanimation process is rather… traumatic. Not everyone makes it through without losing a piece of their mind on the way. Those who don’t… even the Kestora stay away from them.”

“Hold on, reanimation?” Kopaka pressed. “You don’t mean…”

“Oh, but I do. Have neither of you been here before? Well, that makes sense. Nobody’s left in a long, long, long time.”

“But… how does that work?” Pohatu interjected.

“The Kestora teleport us here, assuming our heads are still intact. Then, they rebuild us. Then, they try to send us back, and it doesn’t work. Then, they take us apart, see what makes us work. Once that happens to you, you're gone for good. Oh! We’re here.”

Mavrah guided the two Toa into a tight corridor, unlit save for a few small electronic lights in the walls. From the other end of the corridor came the muffled sound of a crowd.

“Excuse me,” Pohatu spoke up, bowing ever so slightly, “Where exactly is ‘here?’”

“One of the few places we’re still safe.” Mavrah pushed on a section of the wall, and it fell away, revealing a hidden doorway. The doorway led into a chamber resembling one of the villages on Mata Nui, during the Toa’s early days on the island. Dozens of beings of many of the different species which populated the Matoran Universe wandered about and held conversation with one another and went about their own tasks. All of them froze upon seeing the two Toa Nuva.

“It’s fine,” Mavrah assured everyone, “they’re stable.”

The others all nodded and went back to whatever they were doing or saying.

“So if you don’t mind me asking,” the Onu-Matoran turned back to the Toa, “how did you two die?”

“We didn’t,” Kopaka shrugged.

“Ah. Yes. A lot of people tend to forget how they die. I understand.”

“No. We really didn’t die. We’ve been sent here to look for something that might help us catch a killer. Already whoever it is has killed Karzahni and Tren Krom.”

“Karzahni and Tren Krom… are real?” Mavrah put a hand to his mouth. He needed a moment to process this.

“Were. Were real,” Pohatu offered.

“Not exactly helpful,” Kopaka shot him the smallest of smiles, “but you’re right. I never took you to be one for dark humour, Pohatu.”

“I don’t think there’s anything particularly light to joke about right now.”

Mavrah nodded to himself. “Alright. Yes. In that case, I’d like to offer you help in any way I can. Even after a thousand years, I don’t know my way through the Red Star very well, though, so you’d essentially be venturing into uncharted territory. I do know, though, that pockets like our own exist throughout the Star, and you should be safe in them. Just stay away from any broken beings you meet in these halls, and whatever you do, keep away from the Kestora!”

“Thanks,” Kopaka nodded, “but you’re better off staying here. You’d only endanger yourself, as well as us.”

“What about me?” A vaguely familiar being, about one and a half times Kopaka’s height, came wandering out of the crowd. His armour was silver and surprisingly aerodynamic despite how bulky it looked. He extended a clawed hand in greeting. “It’s been a while, Kopaka. And Pohatu! Orange suits you well, old friend.”

Kopaka adopted a defensive stance as the half-stranger approached. Pohatu put a hand on his shoulder for a second, until he calmed down.

“Forgive me for what I’m sure might seem an incredibly rude question, but… who are you?” Pohatu raised an eyebrow.

The silver armoured giant chuckled. “I don’t blame you if you can’t remember me. My name is Hydraxon. It’s been almost a hundred thousand years since we last met, so I imagine we have a lot of catching up to do.”

 

* * *

 

 

Far, far below the Red Star, on the surface of Spherus Magna, Lesovikk wandered through a savannah. The shift of scenery was so gradual that he hadn’t even noticed the desert had ended. Still, though, he wasn’t complaining. Vegetation potentially meant people. People potentially meant answers.

It was only a few minutes before he came across a Matoran and two of the organic people of this world. They were deep in conversation, surveying the area and taking down notes. After the merging of Bara Magna with its two moons, Lesovikk guessed this world must have been almost as alien to them as it was to him.

“Excuse me!” He called. “You, over there!” He waved his hands in the air until he had grabbed the Matoran’s attention. The two parties jogged towards one another.

“Toa!” The Matoran bowed. Lesovikk winced. Clearly, she mustn’t have heard of him. Still, though, he was thankful that someone’s first impression of him wasn’t how much of a disgrace he was. “How may we be of assistance?”

“I’m looking for two other Toa. Each wearing abnormally thick armour. One white, one orange. You haven’t encountered them in your travels by any chance, have you?”

The Matoran looked between her companions, who both shook their heads. “I’m afraid not. Have you lost your team?”

“Yes,” he nodded. Technically, it was the truest thing he had ever said. “I’ll continue searching. Thank you, little one.” He turned and jogged away.

 

Lesovikk kept wandering, the sun setting before him. Now, the entire world carried an immeasurable finality to it, as if its spherical form was the period which concluded a sentence written on a cosmic scale, resolved from the ellipsis of the syzygy which stood in its place mere days ago. The light of Solis Magna nurtured and scorched the soil of this new world, gazing on like a watchful eye desperate to keep reading. The sheer weight of conclusion which rested in the very ground itself seemed to crush all those who might walk upon it, interrogating them for more.

 

“There is no real ending. It’s just the place where you stop the story.”

\- The Great Spirit Mata Nui

 

Lesovikk was absolutely certain Mata Nui said that.

 

* * *

 

 

Velika huffed, turning away from the smouldering wreckage of the fortress. How terrible, that he had gone to all this effort, and had managed to assassinate only one of his targets! He marched through the jungle’s dense underbrush, thankful for the first time that he had chosen such a small, weak body a hundred thousand years ago. He was the perfect size to move about undetected.

After about forty minutes of walking, he pushed aside a clump of vines that covered the jungle floor. Underneath was a small, electronic hatch. A shortcut into the labyrinth of tunnels and chutes Kabrua had told him about. Even Velika had no idea what its purpose could be, but there was something in there, far, far below than the deepest the Great Being had ventured as of yet. He was sure of that much.

He unlocked the hatch. It hissed open. Standard Great Being technology, it seemed, which meant his people had been busy on Bota Magna ever since the Shattering.

He hopped down into the tunnel, and the hatch closed behind him. It was pitch black down here. He placed his bag on the ground, and felt around for his lantern. That’s strange, he thought to himself, I haven’t even turned it on yet, and already it’s glowing.

He quickly realised that that was not the same glow his lantern gave off. Something else was glowing. He felt around for it and produced a Lightstone. As far as he knew, that shouldn’t have been possible. Lightstones didn’t glow outside of the Matoran Universe.

That confirmed it, then. This place was built by the Great Beings of Bota Magna. But why? He was sure that he would have answers soon enough.

He found the corner of these tunnels he had been using as a base of operations for the past few days, and looked over at the long list of names on the wall. Furious at his slow progress, he violently struck out the names of the vile mass of crimson tentacles that had been so desperate to rule the universe, the twisted, jealous failure of both a craftsman and a conqueror who had ruined Velika’s Matoran body so long ago, and the Great Being who had been cursed by his thoughtless desire to touch the Kanohi Ignika. All gone. All killed by him.

Velika sighed. This was going to take far longer than he had hoped, but still, it was a start.


	5. Dead Meat part 2: Another Chance

Terezi anxiously watched over John's lifeless body. Keetongu leaned over her shoulder.

"What happens now?" She asked.

"I… have… assessed… him." The way Keetongu spoke made it clear he was not speaking his native tongue. Terezi was confused by how she could be more fluent in a language she had never heard before than he was.

"What does that mean?"

"If I… am to heal… someone…" The cyclops paused to shift his weight, so that he sat cross-legged on the cave floor. "First… I must look… into their heart… to determine… if they are…" This pause didn't seem to be so much that of an outsider to the language as it was him carefully choosing his next word. "Worthy. And I found nothing… but goodness… and kindness… in him."

As if on cue, John stirred. His movements, as he opened his eyes and sat up, were weak and sluggish. Keetongu held Terezi back before she could hug him.

"He is… not strong… he needs… time."

Terezi nodded. She understood.

"Terezi…" John began, "what are you doing here? Last I remember I was fighting Lord English, and then…" He looked down at himself.

The cave sat in perfectly still silence for about ten seconds before John finally looked into Terezi's eyes, and added, "oh."

Neither could find the words to greet one another with. Before John could speak, Keetongu stood up. "His venom… one I have rarely seen… will take time… to fully recover."

Terezi stood up, too. John tried, but almost fell over. Terezi slung his arm over her shoulder and hoisted him up to her side. "How long?" She asked.

"Few days… venom seeped… deeper than anticipated… stay by him… all times… until he walks… unassisted."

Terezi nodded. That was a relief. Here she had spent the last few hours certain she would lose him forever. She thought of Vezon's warning earlier, about how he would come to wish he had died, but pushed such thoughts from her mind. He had so narrowly survived! That alone was cause for celebration, surely? She suppressed a chuckle. John was here with her now! Alive!  


"Now go," Keetongu demanded, "leave me… in peace. Never disturb again."

Terezi hefted John up onto her shoulder. “Thank you, oh my god, thank you,” she nodded, tears welling up in her eyes. “How could I ever repay y-”

“By leaving!” he shouted. Terezi recoiled and began walking with a barely-conscious John Egbert draped over her shoulder, an unsurprisingly difficult feat on an empty stomach. She wandered out of Keetongu’s cave and offered a slight smile to John. It took him a second to notice her, but when he did, he returned the gesture.  


"H- hey," he breathed, still too weak to use his voice.

"Welcome back to the land of the living, dude," she smirked. "Now hold tight. You're too weak to walk on your own."

John nodded. He went to say, "alright," but that alone was exhausting.

 

* * *

 

 

The cave turned out to be one branch of a labyrinthine network of tunnels, and the two quickly found themselves lost. To make matters worse, Terezi was quickly growing tired of carrying him around. She stopped to catch her breath every ten minutes or so. John hadn't said a word the entire time. He was having enough trouble gathering his thoughts. It was during the fourth break that he finally spoke up.

"Terezi, did we really…?"

Terezi looked at him like he had just grown another head. "Did we… what?" The strange gesture he was making with his hands didn't help, but then it hit her. "Oh. Yeah. Yeah, we did that." She couldn't help but laugh at that.

"Wh… what's so funny?" He chuckled. Her laughter was infectious.

"Dude!" She exclaimed. "I thought you were dead! It's more than miraculous that you're still alive, and that's the first coherent thought that comes into your mind?"

He smiled. He supposed that was pretty funny.

"Are you still hungry?" He asked.

"What? Oh, right," Terezi paused. "Yeah, I guess I still am. But you shouldn't be worrying about me! You're barely even alive yourself."

John nodded. "I'm fine. My death was gonna happen anyway. Well, until…" He didn't need to finish that thought. He didn't want to, either. Dwelling on the danger which had threatened his life until less than an hour ago amplified the pain of his wound, and the dread that came with it.

Terezi nodded. "We can talk about something else, if you want."

"Like what?"

"What was it you were going to say to me before we got dragged here?"

John paused. "You know… I can't remember."

Terezi's heart sank. Of course he didn't. It was just something his addled mind had thrown up in a poison-induced delirium. Her longing for changing the subject - both subjects, actually: John's near-death experience and his forgotten confession - outweighed her exhaustion, so she stood up. "We should keep going. Don't know what might live in these caves."  


John nodded as she pulled him up. If they had paid more attention, they would have heard the hundreds of footsteps, like steel tapping against rock, behind their own.


	6. Legends of New Atero part 1: Gathered Friends

Toa Tahu marched through the halls of the new Coliseum, head down, shoulders wide, fists clenched. After the fall of the city of Metru Nui in the Battle of Bara Magna, work had immediately begun on rebuilding the great tower, and the arena at its base for which it was named. Of course, since much of the ruins of the Matoran Universe were still being transferred here to what would soon be New Atero, it was impossible to match the original's sheer scale just yet, but Turaga Dume insisted that the spire would be restored to its former glory.

Every Matoran walking through the corridor immediately jumped out of the Toa of Fire's path. None had seen him angry before now, but they all knew the tales. Tahu came to a stop outside a grand doorway. This was the office of Turaga Vakama.

He knocked. Vakama, the wise mentor.

He waited. Vakama, the heroic leader.

He pushed the door open, his patience having run out. Vakama, the brilliant liar.

The room was barely lit. Vakama was stood by a forge he had constructed, so that at long last, he could return to his original duties as a mask maker. This room was placed along the outer wall of the Coliseum. All the Turaga insisted it was to ventilate the forge. Tahu suspected that it was because Vakama didn't want to see him so often.

"Greetings, Tahu," he called without looking up, "I take it your training is going well?"

"Yes," Tahu growled, "maybe a little too well." He threw his sword to the floor.

Turaga Vakama turned around. "Oh?"

"These… powers." He sat cross legged, so that the two of them were at eye level. "I shouldn't have them. I should be the leader of the Toa Nuva, but now I'm not even one of them."

Vakama frowned, and leaned on his staff. "I felt the same, once. You know that tale well."

Tahu nodded. "The Visorak horde. I remember. This isn't the same, though. This anger I feel… it's my own. I feel so resentful, so frustrated, because I've been separated from my team. Not the other way around."

The Turaga sighed. "You know, the Hordika venom in my mind was neutralised." He paused. He was about to say something he hadn't said to another living being. Not Nokama, or Matau, or any of the others. "Neutralised, yes, for some time, but not removed."

The Toa fell silent, trying to parse what Vakama was telling him. "You mean…"

"I mean there are still moments where I'm left to fight my Hordika side. You didn't come here for advice, Tahu, did you?"

"What do you mean?"

"You simply came to complain, and to disregard any wisdom I might have to offer. But now, maybe you can see that I can help you. You see, you and I have something great in common."

"What's that?"

"We’re each left to fight our own anger, and we must fight it as long as we can." A fire blazed in Vakama's eyes. A fire which told a story of pride, of fear, of regret, of triumph. Tahu had seen it time and time again, but he never got used to it.

"You are a raging flame," the Turaga continued, "and you know by now that a flame which burns too wildly runs out of fuel. Meet me here whenever you need, but - and I mean this now more than ever - tell absolutely no-one. Not Gali, not Nokama, not Dume. Is that understood?"

Tahu nodded.

"Then let's begin. You’ve been training to try to understand your new powers. I want to train you to do something far more important." Vakama raised his firestaff, its motion through the air lighting its flame. He pointed it at the floor before him, where a large Amaja Circle separated Toa from Turaga. Tahu was amazed that he hadn't seen it, even in this dark room. The forge, the only other source of light in the room, died down. Vakama began pacing around the circular sand pit, and gestured for his student to do the same.

"Gathered friends," Vakama whispered, the shadows flickering from his firestaff and the reverberation of his voice around the room giving Tahu the impression of an audience of dozens, if not hundreds. He was instantly engrossed.

"You have heard our legend, time and time and time again. Listen, now, to our history. In the time before time, more than one thousand years ago, the Great Spirit Mata Nui brought us to an island paradise, which we named in his honour." He placed a small, smooth stone in one corner of the circle, and paced around to the other side. "We had constructed myths, that he had provided us with a new haven after we were forced from our great city, but we had not admitted that the island existed because he had been struck down by the evil Makuta of Metru Nui." He threw another stone down. This one was obsidian black, and jagged. The force of it landing felled the first stone. "Yes, it is true that there is more to every conflict than mere good and evil, but his heart could truly be said to be filled with malice and twisted ambition. But it was not as we had suspected: Mata Nui was not merely asleep. He was dying.

"Lacking any other options, we sent our great Toa Nuva to find the Mask of Life." He threw six more stones, reminiscent of Mata Nui's, albeit much smaller. The stones were scattered and uneven. "It could be said that we were unprepared for their defeat, but such surprise could not compare to the discovery that a new generation of heroes, the Toa Mahri, succeeded in their place." He cast another six into the circle, this time with great care and accuracy. "Their battle was not without sacrifice, however." Vakama struck one of the stones with the tip of his staff, and it disintegrated. Then, he righted the Toa Nuva's stones.

"Finally, the Toa Nuva triumphed and awakened Mata Nui, or so we thought." He removed the black stone, and righted the first stone he had placed with the end of his firestaff. The heat burned the surface of the rock an ashen black. "Makuta had taken over in his place, and condemned us all to live under his dark order. For a time which seemed as if it would never end, we lived in the shadow of his rule. All rebellion, all resistance, was crushed by his protosteel fist. And then…" he looked up expectantly at Tahu.

"And then?" The Toa parroted.

The Turaga of Fire nodded. Tahu considered what to say next. "Then… then… then, during a great battle for the fate of all of Mata Nui's people, and the people of a world we had never imagined, Tahu!" He picked his sword up and pointed it at the stone representing himself. "Tahu, the bold, yet stubborn, confident, yet arrogant leader of the Toa Nuva was stripped of his power and granted new strength! Without so much as moving, he destroyed Makuta's greatest weapon: his mindless, obedient legion of Rahkshi! Makuta’s bond to them lost, he was so distracted that he didn't even notice his impending demise at the hands of his own power." Tahu conjured the power of disintegration, one of the powers he had taken from the Makuta, and touched the burned stone. Instantly, it crumbled to dust. The light returned to the forge. The two beings came to a halt.

Vakama beamed with pride. "I see you're a natural storyteller, Tahu. One day, when you decide you're ready to hang up the mantle of Toa - or "if", as the case may be - I'm sure you would do exceptionally well to take my place, or perhaps even stand by my side. Even though, he-hem, you need not shout so much."

Tahu was flattered, but he had one question. "What was the point of this exercise? All it sounded like to me was you promoting the Turaga lifestyle to me."

His old mentor shook his head and chuckled. "I ask you not to live like me, Tahu, but to think like me. Step back. Think about how our history repeats itself. Time and time again, you’ve fallen into the same traps of arrogance and pride that I had, all those years ago. That is why I ask these exercises of you: so that knowing everything I know, you would not repeat the mistakes I made. There was a time when Keetongu did not revert my friends’ transformations. Well, until…" He trailed off on that thought, raising a long, pointed eyebrow expectantly at his protégé.

"So… I must still have work left to do."

Vakama nodded. "Perhaps, soon, we will discover what that might entail."

 

* * *

 

Tahu strode out of Vakama’s chambers, taking deep breaths. He could control his anger, he could discover his purpose, if only he had the patience to look for it.

Turaga Onewa stood in the corridor, and nodded at Tahu. “I see you’ve been talking to Vakama.”

Tahu nodded. “He offered me some… enlightening advice as to what my future might hold.”

“Is that so?” The Turaga of Stone raised his eyebrow.

“Yes, actually. I feel as if I have new purpose now.”

“Are you sure you can trust him? You know he’s lied to you before.”

Tahu paused. Why did he trust Vakama after all this time, unquestioningly? He certainly wasn’t the most honest Turaga.

“Has Vakama been acting… unusual around the other Turaga lately?” He furrowed his brow at Onewa, quickly glancing over his shoulder at Vakama’s office.

“He’s restless. He doesn’t sit still as long, doesn’t make as many masks as he used to.”

“He’s keeping secrets, then,” Tahu asserted. “He must be. His mood doesn’t change this drastically without a good reason.”

Onewa nodded ever so slightly. “Tell me, Tahu. Why did you seek counsel with him?”

“I feel like I can’t trust myself right now. It’s complicated.”

“I’m sure it is,” Onewa shrugged, “but to go to Vakama for help with an issue of trust?”

“He’s my mentor. I consider myself closer to him than most.”

Onewa pondered this for a second. “Hm. Maybe it’s nothing, but… since you are so close to him, would you mind keeping an eye on him?”

Tahu bowed. “Of course, Turaga.”

“Excellent. I won’t hold you up any longer, then. I wish you all the best on your endeavours, Toa.”

“The same to you, Turaga.”

Then, with a brief nod, the two went their separate ways.

 

* * *

 

Vakama gripped the edge of his workbench. His mouth contorted into a snarl. This was ridiculous. They had beaten the Makuta, and lost everything in the process. After his vision a thousand years ago, the city of Metru Nui had finally been destroyed. To make matters worse, the Toa Mahri had disappeared, Lewa’s whereabouts had been unknown for days, and the mask of time had been stolen.

He slammed his fist onto the table. How dare Tahu think *he* has problems? He had become powerful beyond compare. He hadn’t seen things Vakama had, lived through horrors he had. He didn’t have any right to complain.

Was this the Hordika venom speaking? He didn’t know, or care. If he was this furious on his own, he was amazed he still had such energy in him. He raised his fist again. The motion felt sluggish and tense. He knew the signs. He knew what was about to happen.

The vision came, and it was totally unlike any others he had ever seen. Were these visions still gifts from the Great Spirit? If that were the case, he imagined even Mata Nui had no idea what to make of this.

An unstoppable warrior, whose white armour absorbed blow after blow of elemental power thrown at it. Who sought to bring salvation through the destruction of every last Toa.

A prince, whose mind was warped by the same kinds of visions as Vakama. Who hid his eyes behind black glass, and who rewrote his reality to suit his own ends.

A Toa, whose name had gone unspoken for centuries, and whose body had been kept perfectly in place for equally long a time.

The end of time given form, prepared to stop at nothing to avenge its own existence.

Something big was coming, although Vakama couldn’t say when, where, what, or how.

 

* * *

 

Vakama snapped to attention. He looked around.

Oh.

He was still in his chamber, by himself.

He breathed a sigh of relief. The Hordika Venom was affecting his concentration terribly, and he had begun to slip into deeper and deeper visions. He knew the other Turaga suspected something. That much was certain. It didn’t matter to him, though. He had his own plans set in motion. Plans, he knew, that would work, and that would fix everything.

All he hoped was that the others would be able to forgive him for them.


	7. Derse Dreamers part 2: Blood Orange

Dave froze in terror at the sight of the titanic beast, and realised that he was unarmed: he hadn’t carried any of his swords in years. Even if he had, he doubted any of them could have pierced the hide of this creature. Both parties paused, each sizing up the other. Neither had ever seen anything like the other before.

The latter struck first, striking down at the forest floor with its jaws open wide. Dave was out of practice - he wasn’t a fighter anymore, so he only very barely managed to jump to the side and watch the creature’s mouth slam shut where his neck had been less than a second ago.

_Alright,_ he thought to himself. _Let’s calm the fuck down here. I just gotta let this thing kill me, and then I’ll resurrect once it decides to leave a dead Dave alone to stank up the cybergoth Jurassic Park showroom floor. Then, I fly out like a stupid piece of gar-_

His train of thought was interrupted by the monster opening its mouth again and projecting a jet of flame onto the jungle floor. The flames caught quickly, and the creature lifted its head, slowly turning its flame towards Dave.

_Wait a second,_ he continued thinking, _I killed a guy, right? A guy with his own life and a fiancée and everything. So maybe that automatically makes me too evil to revive._ The fact that his own powers would judge him before deeming him worthy of resurrection every time never sat right with him. Something about the idea of there being a definitive, objective standard of morality imparted by the cosmos or wherever made him feel insignificant, in a strange way. He turned and sprinted off again. He could hear the… dinosaur, he supposed, slowly march in pursuit as his feet lifted off of the ground and he sailed into the air. He almost cleared the treetops - the leaves obscured his vision and a few twigs snagged his clothes, but he pushed on regardless, making no effort to brush aside the obstacles: he simply kept forcing his way upward. Finally, he was free, and the sun’s light streamed in through his sunglasses. He instantly realised that this was neither the sun nor the sky of his own planet, but he had more or less expected as much. Once he was about five or ten metres clear of the jungle canopy, he heard a roar of frustration behind him. He grinned. _Looks like that thing didn’t take a whole lotta effort to outsmart._ He glanced over his shoulder, trying to get one last look at it, and saw that he hadn’t, as he had assumed, heard a roar come from the dinosaur.

Rather, it had come from a rocket fired by the dinosaur. Fired in his direction. He flipped out of the way. The rocket careened off into the distance, the shockwave of its passage knocking Dave’s eyewear askew. He readjusted them. The monster stood, now, in a clearing burned out by its own flames. It locked eyes with its levitating prey. Dave floated backwards as quickly as he could while a launcher implanted in the back of his foe seemed to revolve in some fashion or other. In a jet of smoke and flame, and another roar, a second rocket flew from the launcher. Dave spun his body out of the way, just in time to see the first projectile making its way back to him. _Shit,_ he thought. _These things are homing?_ He dropped out of the air, hoping that the rapid change in his altitude would throw it off of his trail. It curved downward into the jungle, and struck a tree. The tree exploded, and the shockwave bowled Dave over. He returned trying to staying in the air, trying to keep upright as he was struck by a hail of splinters and burning ash. The larger splinters stabbed into him, and many of them punching into his arms jutted out the other sides. He gasped helplessly as two punctured a lung, and another, his neck. It was in this moment that he understood this universe did not care for him as his own had. It would not offer him a dignified fate at the hands of some great and mighty villain, and it would not keep him alive to see through any magnificent destiny it might demand of him. He would die because he dodged a rocket the wrong way and the directions that shards of wood happened to be facing in a totally unremarkable tree among a jungle of millions also just so happened to be the relative direction of some of his vital organs. There was no Jack Noir here, no Lord English, no Condesce, and even if this universe did house threats of equal magnitude, the remainder of it refused to be a pushover to compensate. This train of thought, it turned out, couldn’t go much further. The next moment, he was struck by the second rocket. By the time the sound wave would have reached his ears, and by the time the heat would have touched his skin, and by the time those sensations would have reached his brain, his body was no more than a cloud of flame and ash.

Dave had always hoped that the universe would stop caring about him, and that it would go and hand the title of ‘hero’ to someone far more prepared for it. Only now that he had seen and felt an apathetic reality firsthand would he regret this wish.

 

* * *

 

The tides rolled in and out so softly now that Spherus Magna had lost its moons. The waves lapped gently at the ankles of Kanaya Maryam, who was totally oblivious to the planet’s recent history, but who was every bit delighted to be by the seaside with her darling wife. Still, though, her presence here was deeply troubling. She couldn’t hide her concern that well - the more time she spent here, the more time she felt like she didn’t belong. It was a feeling she’d lived with all her life. In her circle of friends on Alternia, she was the only diurnal troll, and the only jadeblood. In Earth’s brooding caverns, she was always revered by her fellows as a deity (an expectation which never failed to make her deeply uneasy). But it was a feeling which never became any easier to live with.

“I know you’re worried,” Rose offered. She always knew what to say. “This isn’t… well, it’s not even the slightest bit like any universe we’ve been to.” She laughed a hollow laugh and brushed her hair behind her ear. She walked some way up the beach, sat down, and patted the sand next to her, gesturing for her wife to join her. Kanaya complied. Rose put her hand around her shoulder and pulled her close, and they watched the waves gently roll in, and out. In, and out. Kanaya couldn’t help but slow her breathing and close her eyes. She felt calmer now. The waves sounded like she always imagined they would.

“Feeling better?” Rose asked.

“A bit, yes.”

“Should we keep wandering? I doubt this planet would be uninhabited. Maybe someone can help us figure out what purpose our kidnapper had in mind for us.”

Kanaya nodded hesitantly. She wasn’t going to achieve anything if she just sat here. “Yes, I… I think that would be a good idea.”

Rose helped Kanaya to her feet, and they both looked up to the sky upon hearing the cry of something like an albatross. Circling above was a bird not entirely unlike an albatross in stature, but it looked shorter, and stockier, with a thin, bony point curving down from the back of its head, and its wings each featured a small, hooked claw. It flew past them, and dove beneath the waves. Rose grinned in delight, and Kanaya smiled with her. It seemed this planet was not uninhabited after all. Kanaya applauded the bird as it emerged with a small fish in its beak, and Rose scoffed in a barely-successful attempt to stifle a laugh. In her opinion, Kanaya had the only genuinely funny sense of humour in all of Paradox Space.

 

* * *

 

When Dave woke up, he was locked in a small, primitive-looking cage, with barely enough room for him to stand up, and not nearly enough light to see out of it. He felt his arms. They’d healed, much to his relief. _Looks like the universe doesn’t give a shit about whether or not Robo-Jack got cracked open like a fresh carton of OJ, and whether or not his head got sucked into the black hole, because it’s too small to go in the recycling with the rest of the carton…_ okay, Dave realised that this metaphor was getting away from him. He needed to practice his old habits of wandering off on vaguely upsetting tangents. He didn’t do that so much anymore.

“How long have I been out for…?” He wondered.

“About thirty hours,” someone replied. He jumped.

“Who’s there?!?”

A biomechanical biped in dark grey and lime-green armour, a couple of heads taller than he was, leaned forward, out of the shadows. “Hi,” the android nodded, offering his hand. Dave reluctantly shook it. “I’m Lewa. I’m going to be true-brief with you: I’ve only been in here for about half an hour or so longer than you have and it’s giving me an ever-strong headache! This cage-trap is a claustrophobe’s personal Karzahni, I tell you.”

“...Dave,” Dave bowed his head slightly in response. “I just woke up after being killed. I can come back to life after being killed. Well, sometimes. It’s kinda unpredictable. Basically it doesn’t kill me unless my death is ‘important’ or whatever.”

Lewa shrugged and broke the handshake. “Destiny truly is ever-fickle, and impossible to understand.”

“Yeah.” Dave fell silent for a few seconds. “So where are we?”

“Your guess is as good as mine, brother. I was teleported here.”

“Into this cage?”

“Well, no. Not into this cage. But near-close! Then I idle-wandered until some villagers with spears slam-locked me in here. Normally I’d have broken out of such a simple cage like this with ever-ease, but I am almost powerless without my mask. They took it when I almost managed to quick-evade their capture.”

It was at this point that Dave realised he was speaking the same language with which Vezon had spoken to him earlier, and had been the whole time. He realised this because the word Lewa used - _Kanohi_ \- didn’t translate directly into his own language. _Mask_ was the closest word he had.

A Kanohi, as best as he could tell, was a mask made of some kind of metal (although Dave didn’t know what) which granted its bearer strength and power. Since he didn’t have any swords, a Kanohi would probably be their next-best bet for getting out of here.

He sat perfectly still for a moment. He needed to think. He needed a plan, but he had no idea where he was, or who was keeping him locked up here, or who this Lewa guy was, or anything. And the more he sat still and stewed over with his inability to figure anything out, the more Lewa was getting worried.

“Are you alright?” He whimpered. He hoped Dave wasn’t unconscious again.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m cool, but I don’t have a plan or anything. What about you?”

“No, it’s been pain-hard to focus in such a tight-small space.”

Dave nodded. “Okay, cool. How about this? We just fuck around with whatever shit we can get our hands on like a couple of dipshits discovering fire for the first time. ‘Hey. I made two rocks fuck until suddenly a tiny sun appeared on this stick. Let’s just hold food over it for a few minutes until it stops being literally poison, and-’”

“What are you talking about?” Lewa was a day early with his assessment of his capture, that it was going to be *that* kind of day. But he knew with absolute certainty that he had been one hundred percent right.

“I dunno, dude. I’m just saying: let’s do everything we can think of that could conceivably result in us being anywhere but inside this cage, even if it involves doing stuff that’s dumb as hell.”

“I’m all for that.” For the first time in more than thirty hours - no, for the first time in almost a month, Lewa smiled. “If it’s terrible-dumb stuff you want, you’ve been force-given the right cellmate!”

Dave smirked. Awesome. That meant there was just one thing left to do.

 

Begin Jailbreak. 


	8. The Powers That Be part 6: Echoes of Order

Helryx silently counted her company standing atop the cliff. The fortress she and the others had been in not too long beforehand had gone up in smoke, as had, it seemed, its prisoner. The half-Skakdi who had the power of a Kanohi Olmak, the one who had called himself 'Vezon', had saved everybody else, but then he, too, vanished the second everyone took their eyes off of him. Had anyone else gone missing?

To her right stood the wise and mighty Axonn. He was perhaps the most loyal member of her organisation (barring, of course, herself), but given how long he had been away guarding the island of Voya Nui, could she really trust him? After all, he knew what had happened to his teammate.

That teammate was Brutaka, who now stood - well, levitated and glowed menacingly - to her left. He had betrayed her and her whole operation, believing the Great Spirit Mata Nui to be negligent and not worth protecting, and betrayed Axonn to the Piraka for his own benefit. Naturally, he had to be condemned to a life sentence in The Pit, but after hearing about what he had done to its other prisoners, she had no choice but to let him out for... 'good behaviour', she had called it.

His latest mission was supposed to destroy the pool of Antidermis from which the Makuta had been created (thereby preventing the Brotherhood of Makuta from creating any more members, although in the end that could not have been further from their plans), but an unfortunate misstep had resulted in Brutaka absorbing all of it, thereby becoming one with its essence.

Speaking of the Makuta, here was the last surviving specimen, and former leader before Teridax's convocation: Miserix. Helryx knew she couldn't count on Miserix being on her side from here on out - after all, he, like his brethren, all once shared Teridax's ambition, but Miserix, at least, lacked his successor's cunning, drive, and patience. What's more, he lacked the Brotherhood altogether after Teridax eliminated every single member bar Miserix and himself.

Miserix was keeping a keen eye on Tuyet. Helryx didn't trust Tuyet as far as she could throw the island of Daxia. It was rare that Helryx ever met a fellow Toa of water she could truly describe as an enemy, but Tuyet had stolen the Nui Stone and temporarily become the most powerful Toa in the universe, beginning a ruthless and insatiable battle for conquest, which her teammates only just managed to halt before it truly began. Helryx, sensing some use for Tuyet's body and the Nui Stone, had staged the disgraced Toa's death and banished her to a parallel universe. That she stood here, now, was both an insult and a great mystery.

The most surprising addition to the ensemble was, naturally, Artakha. Artakha hadn't been seen by anyone in the Matoran Universe since shortly after its beginning. He was a master craftsman - he had invented everything from the Adaptive Armour to the Axalara T9 to the Toa Mata themselves, and his Mask of creation, alongside the masks of life and time, was one of the three most powerful and influential Kanohi ever created. To Helryx's knowledge, no other being (with the exception of whoever was destined to be the next to wear the mask of life) was capable of using a Kanohi of such calibre to its full potential.

The two Matoran, Helryx didn't recognise. They were clearly from Metru Nui: after all, their diminished physiques suggested that they had fallen for Teridax's capture of the Great City a thousand years ago. A more foolish being would have assumed they were insignificant, but Helryx knew by now that nobody was ever insignificant.

As for she herself, she was Toa Helryx: Toa of water, and the first Toa to ever be created. She was the director of the Order of Mata Nui, an organisation dedicated to carrying out the will of the Great Spirit. Whatever that entailed, now that he had completed his destiny after being exiled from his body (the Matoran Universe itself) had yet to be seen. Finally, there was Lewa, master of air, and one of the six Toa Nuva. But he had wandered off earlier, and had yet to return. The jungle, she understood, was his homeland, so she considered it best to just suppose that he was fine and carry on without him.

Everyone seemed to be arguing with one another over what they were going to do now. After all, much had happened in the past few hours. From their collective exile from the Matoran Universe, to appearing on another planet, to meeting a Great Being so shortly before his demise, it couldn’t be clearer that whatever directions their lives had been heading in before now were either unfavourable or impossible. This was an entirely new world, and it would take an immense amount of work to make oneself a part of it.

At last, Artakha struck the ground with the shaft of his hammer. “That will be enough,” he demanded without so much as raising his voice, and everyone fell silent. “Helryx?” He looked at her expectantly. Everyone else followed suit.

“Yes?” She lowered one eyebrow at him.

“You’re the being with the most authority here. Axonn and Brutaka are both subordinates of yours, and Tuyet belongs in the Order’s custody. Therefore, I’m deferring to you. I suggest Miserix do the same, and I believe Kapura and Hafu here will willingly follow suit.”

Kapura saluted immediately. Hafu did too, albeit reluctantly. Miserix paused, and shrugged. Tuyet simply folded her arms and sulked. She was too busy thinking of how she would go about killing everyone else here, but so far, she only had the Matoran figured out. She could probably manage Axonn on a good day, but this was not a good day at all.

“Very well,” Helryx began. She had not expected to be granted a position of authority over even Artakha himself. That was like having command over Mata Nui.

Well, maybe not *that* extreme.

“Brutaka is to look after Tuyet. I don’t care where they take her or what they do with her, so long as she’s still alive and in this dimension. Once she’s in safe hands, tell the Order we’re alright.”

“What am I to you now?” Tuyet spat. “A treasure? Some kind of trophy? Were it just down to you and I, Helryx, I would kill you with ease and take your organisation for myself.”

“Charming,” Helryx frowned. “If we’re resorting to over-the-top threats already, I hope Brutaka’s retained his… talent. Brutaka, you don’t mind me still referring to you in singular, do you?”

“We don’t mind much of anything anymore,” he confirmed.

“Excellent. Miserix, you are to take the Matoran back to the other people of Metru Nui. After the past month or so, I doubt they’d hold your species in high regard. If you want them to hold you in a higher regard, it’s advisable that you introduce yourself with an act of goodwill, to atone for atrocities you yourself never committed.”

“Know your place, Toa,” the Makuta scoffed. “I answer to none, not even the Great Spirit himself. After being locked up on Artidax for eighty millennia, some time to do as I please is long overdue. Once this little briefing is over and we part ways, I hope none of you will ever see me again.”

Helryx huffed. “In that case, I’ll leave it to you, Artakha.”

Artakha bowed slightly. Hafu’s eyes went wide at seeing her so plainly command such a revered being.

“Finally: Axonn. You and I are going to investigate the wreckage. If nothing else, the mask of psychometry should tell us where the materials the Great Beings built their fortress - or possibly fortresses - with comes from. That will be all. Consider yourselves dismissed.” With that, Helryx turned to look out over the cliff, ran towards it, and jumped. The others made it to the edge in time to watch her somersault and land in a cushion of water, legs apart, and the palm of one hand resting on the ground.

“Showoff,” Miserix grumbled. He spread his wings and took to the skies.

Axonn glanced at Brutaka. “I suppose this is goodbye, then, brother. How strange to part ways so soon after our reunion.”

“We’ll meet again, Axonn. Many, many times.” Brutaka’s maskless face betrayed no emotion. “We’re sure of that. We know you are, too. Until then, though, farewell.” He grabbed Tuyet by the arm, but before she could protest, they both vanished.

Axonn nodded at the empty space left behind, and leapt from the ledge. A fist of water caught him and carried him down to safety, right beside Helryx.

“Are you ready for answers, Axonn? I know I am.”

“Of course. I wouldn’t have worn a Kanohi Rode my whole life if I didn’t want the truth.”

 

* * *

 

Kopaka peered out into the corridor. Normally, he’d use the Kanohi Akaku, mask of X-ray vision, to see through obstacles, but the Red Star had some secrets he’d rather not see a second time.

“All clear,” he whispered to his party.

“Are you sure?” Hydraxon mused, looking over his blades. “You might be one of the most observant members of your team, sure, but patient? Not so much.”

“It’s been one hundred thousand years. I’ve changed a lot.”

“If you say so,’ Hydraxon shrugged.

The trio crept out into the corridor, careful not to make a sound.

“Got a plan for when we run into any Kestora?”

“What’s a Kestora?” Pohatu asked.

Kopaka glared at him. “What do you mean, ‘what’s a Kestora?’”

“I mean, what is a Kestora? I thought it was a pretty straightforward question.”

“Mavrah already told you. Come to mention it, so did Gaardus.”

“Did they? I don’t remember that.”

Kopaka stopped dead in his tracks. The other two joined him. “Pohatu, are you… feeling alright?”

“Well,” the Toa of stone paused. “Now I’m not so sure.”

“You should discuss this later. We all should, in fact,” Hydraxon insisted. “I’m not dismissing it; the prospect of Pohatu forgetting things is concerning, to say the very least, but for now, we should be focusing on staying alive. We’re not safe in these halls.”

The two Toa Nuva nodded.

“So what are we looking for?”

“We’re investigating a couple of deaths, as you know,” Pohatu answered as quickly as he could, eager to prove he remembered at least that much. “Tren Krom gave us the mental image of the Red Star as he died. We believe that something here might answer our questions.”

“Makes sense to me,” Hydraxon nodded. “You think both deaths could have been caused by the same killer?”

“Yes, why?”

“Well, if it’s a serial killer on our hands here,” Hydraxon thought aloud as he resumed walking, “It’s reasonable to imagine that they’ve killed before. And if that’s the case, one of their victims might be here.”

Kopaka thought this over as he and Pohatu trailed behind their former mentor. “That's reasonable. Where do we start looking?”

“Well, I know how everyone back there died, and none of them were murdered. Except, of course, for me. I was killed by Takadox.”

Kopaka tilted his head ever so slightly in silent understanding. He knew the name.

“Not everyone’s gonna have a crystal clear memory of their own fate, though. There’s probably some database somewhere on the Star which keeps track of everyone who comes here. You know, how they died. That kind of stuff. I’m sure if we find it, we’ll have all the answers we could possibly want.”

Pohatu held Kopaka’s hand. Rather forcefully, too - he was naturally the strongest of the Toa Nuva.

“What’s wrong?” Kopaka whispered.

“I… think I know why I forgot what the Kestora were,” Pohatu whispered in reply. “When you used the Akaku to see the adjacent rooms, I… well, I tapped into that power. I saw it all, too. It must have been too upsetting for me to handle - I literally cannot remember any of what I saw. I think I’m suppressing it.”

Kopaka gulped. “With any luck, you can stay that way. I, on the other hand. I remember being here before.”

“You… you were here before? When?”

“During training back on Daxia, Tahu and I tried to get into Helryx’s headquarters, to question her. We’d only just been built, of course, so naturally, we had a lot of questions. We…”

“You…?”

“Well, let’s just say our first attempt wasn’t particularly successful.”

“Ah.”

“If you’re done,” Hydraxon interjected, “We’re almost definitely gonna have far more pressing matters on our hands soon. The Kestora aren’t our most powerful adversaries up here.”

The trio rounded a corner, but Hydraxon quickly leapt back and pushed the Toa behind him.

“That, on the other hand…”

“What is it?” Kopaka fretted, barely disguising his concern.

“Not everyone is stable after being reanimated. The process is both physically and psychologically very traumatic. For some, the stress is too much, and it cooks their minds. They blot out a whole lotta memories in forcing themselves to forget what they saw. Some get off lightly - like you, Pohatu - but for most of them, memories of reanimation are inseparable from a whole lotta other memories.”

“Like what?” Pohatu asked.

“How they died, what their destiny was, what their life was like, that sorta thing. Death is a pretty crucial event in everyone’s life, so forgetting about it is a big deal. Those who have, well… they wander the Star aimlessly. Thing is, though, almost all of them still have some hazy memory of the feeling of destiny. Of feeling like there’s something they need to do, some obstacle they’ve gotta overcome. So they’ll fight, and they’ll stop at nothing to win.”

“Alright,” Kopaka nodded. “Let’s look for another way around.”

“There isn’t one.”  
“What?!?” Both Toa Nuva demanded.

“This is a chokepoint. We’ve gotta take this thing on head-on. And if I were you, I’d hold off on the Kanohi Kakama. Last thing we want is for you to run through a wall and out into orbit.”

“So…” Pohatu thought it over, “no mask powers?”

“No mask powers. But I’ll have your backs until we can next get to safety, so you should be safe in taking every enemy you come across head-on. Any more questions?”

“Not that I can think of,” Pohatu admitted. Kopaka simply shook his head.

“Fantastic. Now let’s get out there and show me what you’ve learned.”

Kopaka ran past the corner, his weapon changing its shape to that of a double-bladed shortsword. His adversary, who stood at twice his height - a member of Brutaka’s species, it seemed - turned to face him. It let out an animalistic grunt as its eyes met his, and it took Kopaka a second to recognise the shape of its mask.

“That’s not great,” Pohatu winced. Kopaka hadn’t noticed him coming to his side, nor Hydraxon bringing up the rear.

It activated its Kanohi Huna, and vanished in an instant.

“It’s totally invisible now,” Pohatu steeled himself. “What do we do?”

“Not totally,” Kopaka reassured him. “It’s shadow is still visible.”

“So, how do we get a light bright enough to cast one?”

“I’m still thinking it through. In the meantime…” Kopaka struck the floor with his blade, a polished sheet of ice spreading forth from him.

“What’s a thin sheet of ice going to do? Trying to slip it up?” Hydraxon smirked.

“Not at all,” Kopaka began.

“But it doesn’t know that,” Pohatu finished for him.

A crack appeared in the ice, where its target had smashed it under an armoured fist. A claw of stone emerged from the floor and grabbed the titan by the right wrist. Kopaka ran forth and swung his sword in an upwards arc, but an invisible left fist struck his midsection and threw him backwards. Pohatu caught him and set him down gently just as their catch broke free of its stone trap. Kopaka leaned on his sword while he regained his balance.

“What’s plan B?” Pohatu whispered.

“I’m still trying to figure out where we can get a light source to see its shadow.”

“Still one-track minded as ever, I see,” Hydraxon chuckled. “Ice was never the most flexible element.”

Kopaka scowled. He very badly wanted to continue on this plan, just to spite Hydraxon, but he was right. The first plan one has in a battle isn’t always the best approach.

“Lower the ceiling. That’s plan B.”

“What?” Pohatu blinked.

“I don’t know, create chunks of stone on the ceiling to lower it. It’s bigger than we are, so we’ll be able to fight in a tighter space than it can.”

“What if I hit its head and cause serious head trauma? It’s in a bad enough state as it is!”

Kopaka hesitated. Pohatu was far better at thinking of others than he ever was. That moment of hesitation, however, was enough time for the unseen giant to deliver a kick to the Toa of ice’s midsection, sending him flying. Hydraxon caught him one-handed, and made some comment about how unobservant he was for getting struck twice, but Kopaka wasn’t listening. He fired bolts of ice along the ceiling. If the monster wasn’t ducking before, it was now.

Pohatu took the opportunity to lower the ceiling by reinforcing it wiith a layer of stone, impeding its movement. Kopaka leapt from Hydraxon’s grip and ran, sword at the ready. His opponent tore a fistful of stone from the ceiling and swung it at the Toa, but before it could let go, the rock grew to envelop its fist, and then its elbow, and then its entire arm. It fell to its knees and came back into visibility: the stone was too heavy for even it to lift.

Kopaka stopped running. Instead, he walked slowly towards the defeated titan, and a small staircase made of ice formed beneath him as he walked. At the end, he came to the creature’s eye level. The two stared at one another for a second. Then, when Kopaka was convinced it wouldn’t fight back any longer, he pulled off its mask.

“Really, Kopaka?” Hydraxon grinned. “Taking an opponent’s Kanohi when they’re defeated.”

“If I can’t use my Akaku without having to see the other horrors that go on behind the walls of this place, the least I’m going to do is have at least one Kanohi I can use.” Kopaka's voice could have been interpreted as a snarl if it weren't so soft. With that, he glanced over at his companions, and resumed walking past the fallen giant. Hydraxon and Pohatu jogged to keep up.

“Kopaka, your chest-” Pohatu piped up. Across Kopaka’s chest, his Nuva armour had been cracked from being struck twice by such a strong foe.

“I’m fine,” Kopaka growled. Pohatu knew that meant Kopaka wasn’t fine at all, but he very, very badly didn’t want to talk about it.

The three walked together in silence for some time after that.


	9. Dead Meat part 3: Chimera

Terezi reached a set of massive metal doors at the end of the tunnel she had been carrying John down. She stared at it for a while, trying to work out how to open it in her exhausted state without dropping her boyfr- without dropping John, she corrected herself.

“What are you waiting for? Why don’t you just kick it open like you do during your badass moments?” John asked.

“That’s… not gonna be easy with how weak I am right now.”

“Oh. Right.”

They both fell silent for a few seconds.

“Hey Terezi?”

“Yeah?”

“I remembered what I was gonna say.”

“Oh?”

“I really lo-”

“Sh!” She urged.

“Hey! I’m try-”

“No! Sh! Do you hear that?”

John shut his mouth. He didn’t hear anything. Not at first. Then he did. There was something approaching. Something big. Something fast. John turned to face it. It was hard to make anything out without his glasses on, but he could see movement. It wasn’t something approaching them. No, it was some things. A swarm of insects, each at least Terezi’s size, were scuttling along the cavern floor, walls, and ceiling. All of them were headed in the duo’s direction.

“What the fuck do we do now?” John panicked.

“I don’t know! There’s no way we can fend them off!”

“We have to try pushing this door open. Here, I’ll help!” John shook Terezi off and leaned his weight against the door. She looked at him like he was crazy. How did he think he had the strength to do that at a time like this? Still, though, they were out of options. She helped him push the door open, but the hinges had been too worn by time. It snapped off its frame and clattered to the ground. John fell over onto it and screamed in pain when he landed on his shoulder. Terezi hefted him back up as quickly as she could. They’d entered a large, square chamber with plenty of space to get out of the insects’ way. She pulled him aside. They each felt him bump against something in her pocket, but before either of them could wonder what it was, the insects scrambled into the room. Terezi stepped in front of John and drew her cane. She pulled it apart, the middle opening to reveal the two swords concealed within. Few of the insects seemed particularly interested in picking a fight, however, and those which did backed off upon seeing her blades.

“Terezi, what’s… what’s…?”

“I don’t know. They probably thought we were on the verge of death and an easy meal.”

“To be fair, we kinda are.”

“Yeah.”

“Hey, why are we speaking a weird robot language?”

Terezi blinked. She hadn’t noticed she had been speaking the same language as the beings which had rescued John. Somehow, it came more naturally to her than her own tongue.

The insects didn’t seem to be too sure of what to make of her. On the one hand, she was clearly ready to defend herself. On the other, she wasn’t making a move. Every time one approached, she would hiss at it, and it would back off again. Slowly, she began to guide John through the swarm, her with her swords still up, him clinging anxiously to the side of her shirt.

“Why aren’t they attacking us?” John whispered.

“They could easily overwhelm us,” Terezi snarled into the crowd, “but if I had to guess, I’d say they know I could take a few of them out on the way down. And none of them want to be one of the ones I kill.”

John could hardly focus through the chittering of the beasts’ mechanical mouths. Each creature on its own was barely audible, but with the entire room full of them, the sound was unbearable.

“They’re too loud. I can’t stand it.”

“Yeah, me neither, but we should probably leave them alone unless they attack us.”

John ignored her. He was too tired to listen right now. “I’m gonna blow them away.”

“Don’t-”

It was too late. He was weak, but he had the strength to muster a gale strong enough to blow them back. They all slid to the back of the room as their legs slipped in vain attempts to find firm footing. Realising his power, they scuttled off down tunnels and through nooks in the wall until the room was empty bar the two travelers. They both sighed and sat down in exhaustion. He was looking particularly worse for wear after that.

“How’s your wound?” She asked. “Let me smell it.”

John frowned. Terezi’s ability to see through smell alone never ceased to unsettle him, despite how much he liked her. Maybe even because of how much he liked her, he didn’t know. It didn’t matter anyway; he wasn’t going to show her. She would only worry if she saw it.

“Show me your stabs, John,” she insisted. He wanted to protest, but she was marginally stronger than him right now. He sighed and lifted his shirt.

The entirety of the flesh just between the ribs in his chest was one big circular scab. The blood had been darkened so much by the venom of the tooth that had penetrated his skin a week ago that it looked almost coal black. She gasped in horror.

“No, it’s okay!” He forced a reassuring laugh. It didn’t work.

“Does it… hurt?”

“Yeah, totally! But I’m not dead, so I don’t care.”

“Don’t act like that! It’s still a big problem…”

“I guess!” He rolled his eyes. “I’ll be fine! I’ve been through worse!”

“Like what?”

“Like… uh… the time I… hey, what’s that in your pocket?” He suddenly remembered there was something in there. The perfect distraction.

“What? Uh…” Terezi patted her pockets, “just the wallet. Wait no, what-”

The wallet was in her right pocket, but something was very clearly in her left. She pulled it out. A note, written in the language she had been speaking since she got here. She didn’t know how she recognised its written counterpart, but it was easier to read than any language she had ever seen, smelled, or felt.

 

“You’re welcome.

\- Vezon”

 

Hold on, there was something else in there. It was slightly harder to get out, but… oh! It was a pair of rectangular glasses. John’s glasses. How had he…? Well, if he could jump between his own world and hers, then surely finding a timeline where John’s glasses were intact would have been trivial. She handed them to him. “These… are yours…” she mumbled, deep in thought.

“Whoa! Thanks!” He hurriedly put them on. His vision was perfect. For the first time since he had reunited with Terezi, he could see her face perfectly.

“Wow,” he gasped, “you’re beautiful.”

She blushed. “O-oh. You… you too.”

He raised a hand to his own cheek. He really liked that, he thought.

“Terezi?”

“Yeah?”

“I really-”

An enormous biomechanical behemoth burst into the room. It had the body of a tiger, the head of a bull, the tail of a scorpion, the wings of a hornet, and two long, thin arms extending from its shoulders, each ending in a fist-like club. It sniffed the air. Pieces of many of the insects from before were tracked into the room on two tank-like treads where its legs should have been.

“What the fuck is that thing?!” John demanded while the beast smelled the air. Once he spoke, it spotted him and threw a punch. Terezi barely pushed him over in time before the strike connected with and cracked the stone wall. John forced himself up. This was ridiculous. He hadn’t avoided death a mere hour or two ago to be killed by whatever the fuck this was. It threw another punch. He saw no option but to dissipate. It took all his strength to fade into the wind and reappear standing behind the beast. Terezi got to her feet too, but the creature didn’t seem interested in her. It turned to John again and charged. He staggered out of the way and it skidded to avoid colliding with the far wall. John laughed victoriously, but its neck extended to almost the length of the creature’s body and its head butted him back. He screamed in agony as it struck his midsection. Terezi drove her blades into its side. When she removed them, the wounds healed instantly. She jumped back in surprise, but her attack was enough to grab the monster’s attention. It turned to look at her. She backed off slowly. John threw a remarkably weak burst of air at it, struggling to stay standing. The creature was hardly affected. If anything, it seemed stronger. It turned back to him and prepared to strike with its tail. It looked no less lethal than the gold tooth that had shredded through the flesh of his torso, during what was so nearly his final battle. Terezi thumbed through the wallet as quickly as she could, looking for anything that might help. A hat. A razor. The car (how did it get there? Another one of Vezon’s tricks? Whatever, there would be time to be wary of him later). A pipe. An absurd quantity of shaving cream, and a lighter. Perfect. She held the lighter in front of one can of the cream and sprayed flaming shaving cream onto the beast. It flailed angrily, trying to shake the burning substance off. It huffed, finding no way to do so, and tensed. In the blink of an eye, its entire body froze in a chunk of ice.

John and Terezi stared at it anxiously. Was that it? Was it over? It didn’t seem to be moving. After a few seconds, they each sighed with relief. Terezi hurried over to John.

“Are you okay?” She asked. He was too winded from his blow to respond, which was an answer in and of itself. She nodded and looked around the room. There were three more tunnels connected to this room. Did any of them lead to the surface? Was there even a surface to go to?

John panted and tapped her shoulder. Oh, she hadn’t noticed he was trying to get her attention. She turned to him. He was pointing to the path opposite the door they had entered through.

“What? Are you sure that’s the way out?”

He nodded.

“How do you know that?”

“Air…” he wheezed, “currents…”

She nodded. That was good enough an answer for her. “Do you need me to hold you until we get there?”

He forced a smile and nodded.

“Alright.” She leaned on him as gently as she could, and he did the same. She wrapped an arm around his back to keep him close, and the duo started in the direction of the exit.

 

* * *

By the time Terezi had reached the surface, John was almost asleep in her arms. Poor bastard, she thought, he hasn’t caught a break since the day before his birthday. It looked like they had emerged into some kind of vast desert. She lifted her nose to the sky. The scent of dusk was in the air. She remembered adjusting to a diurnal lifestyle in what little time she spent on Earth, whose sun’s glare was nowhere near as intense as Alternia’s. Now, she was beginning to instinctively feel tired with the going down of the sun.

“John! Are you awake?” She whispered.

“Huh? Yeah, barely.” He rubbed his eyes and yawned. “I’m just… so tired right now, honestly.”

She nodded. Why wouldn’t he be? She gently laid him seated upright on the ground. She rifled through her right pocket and produced the wallet again. There was one card here that… yeah. There it is. A captchalogue card with the image of John’s late father’s car. She tossed it onto the ground, and the car itself sprung up from it. John grabbed her left arm and hoisted himself up with a painful grunt, and opened the back door. The back seat was beginning to indent a little from where he had kept sleeping on it. Tonight, that groove would just grow deeper, he thought to himself as he laid out across it. It was cramped, but it was the closest thing he had to a bed until he got back home. Could he get back home? He wondered. He really badly hoped so. He had grown up in that house. He had spent his entire life there until he made the fateful decision to confirm Lord English’s defeat. That house was home to twenty three years of memories, both good and bad. Okay, eighteen or so years of good and bad, and then the last five were just bad. He looked up at the ceiling light. He flicked its switch as Terezi climbed into the front seat. Nothing happened. He did it again, and again, and again, and it wouldn’t turn on. This thing had really fallen into disrepair since Dad died. He sighed in defeat and fell asleep almost immediately.

Terezi looked over at the back seat, where John was already asleep. She didn’t feel too far behind. This had been a stressful day for both of them. Not the most stressful, sure, but probably top twenty. She closed her eyes as she began to drift off. It didn’t change anything, of course, but it reminded her of when she was a kid. When she could still see. Before any of this shit happened. The last thing she heard before she fell asleep was John’s gentle breathing.


	10. Legends of New Atero part 2: City of Song

“That’s 1-1!” Takanuva grinned, while he watched Onua retrieve the kolhii ball from his own goal. “How’s that? Even against both of you by myself, I can still hold my own!”

Night had fallen hours ago, and the three Toa - Takanuva, Gali, and Onua - had been playing Kolhii two-on-one with the Mask of Light as their only source of light ever since.

The field was poorly-defined, since New Atero had barely begun construction. It was no more than a large circle, two metres deep in the ground, which Onua had created with his elemental power over earth. Sand whipped up by the desert winds (Gali had insisted that New Atero be built in the desert, so as to avoid interfering with any of the planet’s wildlife) had quickly filled it. It reminded Takanuva of the Kolhii arena in Po-Koro.

“Please remember,” Onua chuckled, “You are the only one of us who has ever played this game professionally. Whenever I played, it was to humour Pohatu.”

“Yeah!” Takanuva cheered. “You’ve played against Pohatu, so you should be the best at this out of all of us!”

“I never said I won.”

Another set of shadows cast themselves over the field as a golden light shone on the trio. Everyone turned to face the light’s source - a clearly exhausted Tahu - as he hopped down into the pit.

“How did it go?” Gali asked.

“Could have been worse, could have been far better,” the Toa of fire shrugged. “I’m still not a Toa Nuva anymore.”

“Of course you are!” Takanuva put his hands on his hips.

“I’m not. I don’t have any of my Nuva powers, or additional armour, or even the ability to form Akamai.”

Takanuva looked down. He didn’t like to see a hero he looked up to look so defeated.

“How’s this?” Onua offered. “A game of Kolhii. You and Takanuva against Gali and myself. And let me tell you, when you see Takanuva play, you won’t be so sure being a non-Nuva Toa makes you weaker than your teammates.” With that, he set the ball in the middle of the field.

“That’s not what I’m worried about,” Tahu sighed. “Strength means nothing if my bonds to you have been shattered. I’m not fit to lead you anymore. Until I can be restored, I’m not your leader. That title belongs with Kopaka. Speaking of whom… any news yet?”

“None,” Gali shook her head. “We haven’t heard a word from them since they headed north this morning.”

“And the same goes for Pohatu?”

“Yes.”

“And we still don’t know where Lewa is?”

“No,” Onua answered.

“Mata Nui, and we call ourselves a team…” Tahu slumped against the wall.

Takanuva scissor-kicked the Kolhii ball, bounced it off of his chest, mistimed his headbutt, and stumbled as it struck the back of his head. He quickly righted himself, and kicked the ball back into place.  “They’ll be fine! I’m sure,” he paused and cleared his throat to deliver his best impersonation of Makuta Teridax, “a simple game of Kolhii,” he cleared his throat again (while struggling not to laugh at his own impression), returning to his normal voice, “would help you take your mind off things.”

“The Toa Nuva aren’t infallible warriors, you know,” Tahu grumbled. “We’re-”

“Oh I know!” Takanuva assured him. “Gali told me all about how the Piraka beat the masks off you guys. And there was that time you guys let Jaller die. Which, by the way, I’m not mad about. Don’t ask me if I’m mad about it, because I’m not.” He huffed, in a way that accurately conveyed how mad he wasn’t.

“He came back,” Onua corrected. Takanuva just looked away. He didn’t want them to see how angry thinking about Jaller made him. He didn’t know why he’d even brought him up. Still, it was better to get this conversation out of the way sooner rather than later.

“Of course,” he grumbled. “Of course. I brought him back. But I can’t this time. Something happened to him and Hahli and all the others. I overheard Kopaka talking to you guys yesterday. Something beyond our comprehension just… changed them. I want to help them. We all do, right?”

The other three Toa nodded in agreement. “But what can we do?” Gali urged.

“I don’t know. Nothing, probably. The Battle of Bara Magna exhausted almost every asset we have.” Takanuva turned to his colleagues. “Now the Skakdi have an ally who can create an entire city in a second?!? And it’s controlling my friends!?! I’m at a loss here, I really am.”

“They were friends to all of us,” Tahu huffed. “Trust me. We’re as torn up over them as you are. We’re all in the same boat here. But it’s no use worrying about them until the Hagah report in.”

Gali forced a smile, trying to lighten the mood. “It’s ironic that Makuta’s former bodyguards are our greatest hope for spying on a being who existed to defy him.” Onua and Tahu chuckled. There was a strange kind of humour to be found in that. Takanuva smiled too.

“You’re right. There’s no use getting worked up about this. Not yet, anyway. So, in that case… What do the Toa Nuva do for fun?” The Toa of Light idly juggled the Kolhii ball from one foot to the other.

“Fun…?” Onua glanced at his fellows.

“Ah. Right.” Tahu looked back at his counterparts of water and earth. “Well, I don’t think we…”

“It’s…” Gali began, “Well, we’ve been very busy ever since our awakening, what with the corrupted Rahi, and the Bohrok, and sealing away the Bahrag, and stopping the Bohrok-Kal releasing the Bahrag, and the Rahkshi, and evacuating the villages destroyed by the Rahkshi, and the Piraka, and releasing the Bahrag ourselves, and-”

“Alright, I get it.” Takanuva raised his hand and laughed. “Not really any time to yourselves, huh?”

“No, not at all.”

“Well, I guess we’ll all have time to learn, now,” Onua thought aloud. “Especially once the others get back.”

None of the other Toa met his gaze.

“I’m certain they’ll be back, eventually,” he shrugged. “When have I ever been wrong before?”

Tahu and Gali looked uncertainly at one another. Takanuva scratched his head. None of them could remember a single instance of Onua being wrong about anything at all.

 

* * *

 

A few nights later, Tahu had his second meeting with Vakama.

The Toa and Turaga of fire both stood on the roof of the Coliseum, looking out at the city. It was beginning to look more and more like a city now, and it had already outgrown Ta-Koro in its prime. The Coliseum itself still hadn’t reached the scale of its prior incarnation, but construction only took place during the day, meaning that the two were safe to assume that they were in private. If anyone did approach, they would be very easily visible in Tahu’s glow. Tahu looked up at the stars. He could never read them in his brief time in Metru Nui, or in what he could remember of Daxia, so to him, the night sky here would have looked the same were it not for the presence of the Red Star.

Vakama, on the other hand, saw the endless possibilities of countless worlds orbiting countless stars, and the rich tapestry of complex, yet staggeringly simple patterns traced out by their eons-long dance, a dance older than the Great Beings, older than the very planet they stood on, and a dance that would continue long after the Protodermis in his body was dust on the wind.

The duo had been standing in silence like this for a few minutes, as per instructions Vakama had silently gestured. Naturally, it was Vakama who broke this silence.

“How goes your training?” He asked at last.

“It doesn’t,” Tahu admitted.

“Oh?”

“I’m giving up on using these powers. Maybe Nektann was right. I’m too powerful for my own good.”

“Surely you’re still prepared to use them as a last resort?” It was rare that Vakama was ever surprised by Tahu, but when he was, he very much was.

“If I have to, perhaps. But there’s no enemies left for us to fight. We won. It’s over.”

“Yes, we… I suppose we… right. Of course.”

“Vakama?”

No reply.

“Vakama?!?”

The Turaga shook his head, as if suddenly becoming aware of his surroundings.

“I’m terribly sorry, Tahu. I simply have a lot on my mind right now.”

Tahu nodded, albeit reluctantly. He knew not to trust Vakama as much as he had in the past. “Should we… Reschedule?”

“No, no! You’ve come all the way up here. I wouldn’t want to make it all for nothing.”

Tahu sighed, and his face softened slightly beneath his Kanohi. “I feel more in control of myself now. I feel like I’m ready to become a regular Toa, not one of Mata Nui’s elite six, or whatever role destiny had me fill. My work there is done.”

Vakama looked away with disappointment. “Then you haven’t learned a thing I’ve taught you.”

“What? Turaga, what are you…?”

“Do you think destiny is all there is to life? Do you not suspect that you must live for purposes that Mata Nui did not grant you? The Great Spirit may have been our whole world, but there is more to life than devotion to him. More challenges, and you must be ready to face them for the good of all people, not just his own. Especially now that our world and the world of the Agori have become one. If you can’t understand that, then teaching you has been my greatest failure. What was the last thing you said to me last we spoke?”

“I… can’t remember.”

“You said you still have work to do. You were right. Now, your sudden change of heart is dangerous. Stay true to your duty, Tahu.”

“I’ll try,” he grumbled.

“You must.”

“I see you haven’t been managing your emotions all too well.”

“I’m…! I’m fine,” Vakama muttered, and clenched his fists. Tahu knew better than to argue with him.

“What of the other Turaga? I don’t hear much from them. How are you all adjusting to this new city?”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Vakama shrugged. “I’ve been too busy to meet with them very often. I’m keeping to myself. You seem to be doing the opposite.”

Tahu flinched. Was Vakama onto him? “You mean, with the other Toa?”

“Yes, of course. Who did you think I meant?”

“The other Toa,” he lied, terribly, “hence why I asked.”

Thankfully, Vakama was too exasperated to question him. “There aren’t many of you left,” he observed, and for a fleeting moment, remorse eclipsed the burning strength in his eyes, like the briefest relief from the blaze of the desert sun.

Tahu sighed. “That’s true. I suspect that soon some of us may have to give up our power for another generation, lest we be wiped out entirely.”

“And would you accept this task, if it fell to you?”

“As a last resort, certainly, but more than anything I want to be able to stand shoulder to shoulder with my brothers and sister again.”

“…Of course. First comes unity, after all.”

Tahu nodded, but now his eyes were back on the sky. “Will that be all, Turaga?”

“Oh…? Oh, yes! Thank you very much for your time, Tahu. I understand it’s in short supply for both of us nowadays.”

 

* * *

 

Onewa strode into the Turaga’s communal chambers. Sat around a hexagonal table were four of his former teammates from his days as a Toa - Nokama, Whenua, Matau, and Nuju - as well as Turaga Dume, the Turaga of Metru Nui from when they were mere Matoran.

“What took you so long?” Matau smirked. “Tahu long-talking, as usual?”

“Actually, Vakama moved his rendezvous point to the roof. Tahu seems to think he was illustrating a point about this new world we’re living in, but I think it’s safe to suspect that he’s onto us. Here’s the plan. We-”

“Whoa, whoa,” Whenua held up his hand. “Who appointed you leader?”

“Nobody,” he shrugged, “but Vakama poses a huge threat to us all, and if we’re going to stand up to him, we need a plan.”

“We need a plan,” Nuju parroted, “but we don’t need *your* plan. No offense, Onewa, but you’re not exactly the leader type.”

“Oh, is that so? And who do you suggest lead us instead? Dume?! The only Turaga among us who’s ever led *anything* hardly even knows Vakama!”

“Oh, please,” Dume spat. “I-”

“What about Matau?” Nokama interrupted. “He’s talked Vakama out of this kind of thing before.”

“Yeah,” Matau folded his arms and rolled his eyes, “and that means it’ll sure-work a second time. Besides, I’d be a terrible leader! I’m not exactly the most team-oriented among us.”

Dume rested his head in his hands. “By the Great Spirit, I cannot believe this. Are you sure your team rescued my city?”

“Whoa, hey!” Whenua snapped. “We didn’t spend a thousand years trying to get back to Metru Nui just for you to dismiss everything we did for you.”

“And I didn’t spend a thousand years repairing the entire city just for you to-”

“Whenua’s right,” Nuju cut in. “You wouldn’t believe the lengths we went to get the people of Metru Nui to safety. The Rahi-Nui stung and mortally wounded Nokama, Matau almost got dropped off the top of the Coliseum, and Vakama challenged Makuta directly. That’s just the tiniest fraction of what our journey was like. Did you know any of that?”

“I had some idea, of course, but the fact rem-”

“No ‘but’. If you don’t know what we went through, then you have no right to judge us. And you certainly don’t have any right to think you understand Vakama.”

“What’s there to say?” Onewa grumbled. “All he does is sulk and keep secrets.”

“Not helpful, Onewa,” Nokama grimaced.

“No, Dume’s right to be sceptical of us. Do you really think we couldn’t have prevented-”

“Enough!” Matau screamed, banging his fists on the table. Everyone froze. The Turaga of air sighed with relief. “A lot of terrible things happened to us in the dark-time of the Great Rescue, but we have no reason to believe that’s an indicator of what this… whatever *this* is, entails, is. So all of your fear-thoughts of our past are totally irrelevant!” The other Turaga resumed arguing, but he raised his hands. There was fierce determination in his eyes. Only the Turaga of water knew how seriously he was taking this, because of the time the two of them had spent with Vakama. He barked at the council, demanding their silence. Too stunned to react, they obliged. “I’m not done! I was going to brief-add that I think Nokama should be our leader.”

“Me?” She stammered.

“Yes! You! I don’t see any other Nokama in this room, do you?”

“Of course, I’m just astonished that you think I’d be a good leader.”

“He’s right,” Nuju nodded. “You’re consistently among the wisest, bravest, and most intelligent members of our team. I think you’d make a good leader.”

“You’re level headed, too, and that’s a quality in short supply among us,” Whenua admitted.

Nokama laughed. Onewa huffed and hesitated before offering his own opinion. “Alright, sure. Nokama would make a good leader. Better than Vakama ever did, anyway. In fact, why wasn’t she our leader from the start?”

“Probably lack of initiative on my part,” she shrugged.

“So, it’s unanimous, then?” Dume looked among the other Turaga, and they all seemed to nod in some form of agreement.

“Very well,” Nokama bowed. “I’ll do my best.”

“So,” Onewa took a seat at last, “I hope you’re all finally ready to at least hear out my plan.”

“Actually, I have a plan of my own,” The Turaga of water smiled. “Allow me to explain…”


	11. Derse Dreamers part 3: BailJreak

Imagine a feeling of dissatisfaction with one's own being. Not in a higher, psychological sense - this was not a feeling brought on by crushing upset or mental illness - but rather, in a more primitive, carnal sense. A sense that the simple fact of existence feels vaguely uneasy. This feeling coursed through Dave Strider as a long-forgotten memory slipped through his fingers like water. As a Hero of Time, he was hyper-aware of his aspect's passage, and in the half of a second he hesitated to fret over something entirely ineffable being wrong, he realised that his life, from now on, would be half a second out of phase with where it would have otherwise been. He wasn't sure if this half-second would be eaten up by the interference patterns of everyday life in a random universe, washing over him like the rains brewed from a storm of pure entropy, or if he had butterfly-effected an entirely new fate for himself into being.

Lewa recognised Dave's expression during its very brief residence upon his face. He himself knew what it was like to have thoughts he could never either simply reach out and grab, nor disperse altogether. He felt that same feeling whenever his train of thought was interrupted by the same empty, long-dismissed desire to CLEAN IT ALL IT MUST BE CLEANED IT MUST BE CLEANED CLEAN IT ALL CLEAN IT ALL CLEAN IT ALL IT MUST BE CLEANED ALL OBSTACLES WILL BE REMOVED. It wasn't a feeling he acted on anymore - or even felt compelled to - but every time it crossed his mind, it drained him, and for a few moments he lacked the excitement and energy the others seemed to admire about him.

Not that he hated that completely, however. The echoes of the Krana screaming into his mind that order must be upheld - no, *enforced* - relieved him of the fear that he might one day cave into the sheer, uncaring chaos his dark side had told him he could embrace. But that, too, worried him: what kind of Toa needed to have had their mind controlled by a Krana to keep their own judgement in check? The other Toa Nuva had a running joke about the frequency with which Lewa had been possessed or controlled or corrupted by external influences, and while he always laughed with them, every time they did so he was filled with the urge to scream at them, oh yeah? Well, what if he liked the feeling of being told what to think? Because unlike the rest of the time, it would not be his own thoughts everyone seemed to scold him for! He already knew how irresponsible, carefree and whimsical his behaviour tended to look, and he hated it. He sure didn't need any of his friends to constantly remind him of that.

"Are you sure now's the right time?" Dave asked at last.

"No," Lewa admitted, "but yesterday everyone was busy at late-sun, beca-"

"At what?"

"You know. Dusk."

"Oh. Right."

"...because whoever it was high-watching this cage got switched out for the night shift. Unless you wanna wait for early-sun, we work now."

Dave nodded. "Let's do this then, I guess."

**Dave: Squeeze through the cell bars.**

Dave bumped his face against the bars of the cage, and his sunglasses jabbed into his ears. He cursed under his breath at the pain, removed them, and tried to force his whole head through, but he wouldn't fit.

"This is stup-" he began to exclaim, before Lewa covered his mouth with his own hand.

"Shhh!" The Toa urged.

"Come on," Dave whispered, "like you could do any better."

"I can try."

**Lewa: Use Dave as a battering ram to bust out of the cage.**

Lewa grabbed Dave's waist in one hand and his collar in the other.

"Don't tell me you're thinking of doing what I think you're thinking of doing."

"Hey, it's worth trying."

"Dude. Dude, stop. No, you literally don't ha-"

He swung his cellmate with all his might, and diminished though it was without a Kanohi, he was still a Toa Nuva. He forced Dave's head through the bars, and then...

Well, this certainly wasn't ideal.

"Okay," Dave took a deep breath, "now pull my head back out."

Lewa tugged as firmly as he could without hurting Dave, but he wouldn't budge. "I can't! You're firm-lodged!" He confessed.

"Fuck- Shit- Let me-" Dave grumbled as he kicked and squirmed, desperate to get out. His right shoe butted into Lewa's face. Lewa reeled, banged against the opposite side of the cage, and shot upright. His large, oafish stature burst through the cage roof with ease, and the whole thing fell apart. Dave landed on his back, and let his mouth hang open. This must have been one of the worst jailbreaks in the history of every plane of existence, he decided.

"Someone must have loud-heard that, right?" Lewa offered Dave a hand, and he gladly took it.

"What are they going to do, put us in another cage?" Dave hoisted himself back up.

"They have spears. We should probably leave before they use those spears." Lewa paused. "You know, on us."

"Right. Yeah. You know, I always thought spears were the most Freudian of weapons."

"I don't know what that means."

"Okay."

The cage looked to be in some kind of large concrete-walled room, filled with cages much like their own (albeit intact). The cages all looked to contain some kind of animal or group of animals, but all were either dead or dying. Lewa's face fell, and he looked around, shaking his head slowly. He couldn't bear to see creatures which should have been roaming freely and healthily instead being locked up and left to rot. The light of sunset streaking in through a barred ceiling threw ghastly shadows across their faces, and hid the wounds of the wounded, leaving altogether too much to the imagination.

"This place..." he muttered, "what is this place?"

"This is some fuckin' Doctor Moreau shit. Except without all of the weird TF fetish bait, and instead just, like. Animal cruelty. Actually, it's not really like Doctor Moreau at all. It's just depressing."

Lewa didn't have the patience to ask what that meant. He crossed the floor to a cage containing a weak-looking bird of prey, and it groaned in concern as he reached out a finger to stroke its plumage.

"You don't belong here," he whispered.

"Hey, I thought we were supposed to be making a break for it," Dave interrupted.

Lewa blinked. "Of course. But we can't just leave all these creatures here."

"Sure we can. We're trying not to get killed, remember?"

The Toa scowled at the Knight. "They'd die here, uh..."

"Dave."

"Dave, they'd die if they had to stay here any longer. Please understand that."

Dave frowned. He noticed Lewa didn't compound words so frequently when he was upset. Dave seemed at least a fraction as uncomfortable with this place as Lewa did, which certainly cooled the latter's nerves. "We can... we can come back for them later. I promise."

Lewa sighed in defeat. He opened his mouth to reply, when two warriors, each brandishing a hooked spear, bolted into the room.

"About time," Dave sighed. "Holy fuck, how big is this place? I've been in this world like a day, and already they have animal cruelty, understaffing, and military-grade explosives. I mean it's not the *least* promis-"

Immediately, both guards lunged at him. He yelped and somersaulted over them from a standing start, but he hadn't fought in years. He heard something in his back click, and his clothes were snagged on one spear. It was at this point that he realised his clothes either had holes burned through them at best, and were utterly tattered at worst. Being struck and killed by fist-sized splinters and a rocket clearly hadn't done his attire any favours. He stayed in the air. If he landed, these bastards would just kick his ass. He gestured for Lewa to run, but clearly, the Toa had already had that idea by now.

Lewa sprinted down a corridor. His armour couldn't adapt to suit his eyes in the darkness. Not without his Kanohi. It seemed there was nothing he could do without it.  
 _Very strange that a Toa-hero should be almost completely reliant on it_ , he thought to himself.

He sprinted (or rather, came as close as his body could manage, without the strength granted by a mask) down corridor after corridor, peering into back room after back room, but only saw yet more cages, and old, worn out machinery, and collections of weapons and trophies made out of bone and ivory and dozens of other substances he didn't recognise, and...

and...

and...

Lewa trembled in the doorway of the largest chamber yet, trying desperately to reason with himself. He couldn't be seeing this. It didn't make sense! It would be the height of cruelty, and what's more, it would be completely absurd! _Haha, okay_ , he thought. _Joke-time is over! Laugh it up! That's obviously just molten silver, or some other metal I don't recognise! There was no way this room could possibly be a vat of..._

But it was undeniable. Two people, looking much like the guards Lewa had been accosted by (although thankfully - by only the most cynical definition of "thankfully" - they seemed too preoccupied by their task to notice him), were carting cages of various sizes around the vat, and pushing their contents into the glistening metallic pool. All offerings were claimed by ripples of silver liquid. Most were dissolved instantly. Those which were alive went down crying or screaming or squawking or whatever sound they could manage before their mouths and throats and lungs were filled and burned and disintegrated. A few did not, though: some clawed their ways back to the surface, looking warped and twisted. Others emerged looking stronger and more full of life than ever before. One quartet of eyes saw Lewa the moment they emerged, and a titanic arthropod, easily the size of a Toa, with two powerful claws, a maw of arrowhead-like teeth, and a body covered in armour as white as bone, crawled to the edge of the vat. Towards Lewa. Droplets of silver liquid dripped from gaps in its exoskeleton and splattered against the stone floor, and they hissed and sizzled, burning away tiny cavities with small grey-white plumes of vapour. Lewa backed away. He was too distracted to turn and run, because that odour was unmistakable: this was Energised Protodermis.

Lewa finally worked up the resolve to flee just as one claw struck and shattered the ground where he had been standing. He needed to find his mask. He really really needed to get it back on, before any horror these people were brewing up deemed him a morsel fitting for their first meal, and preferably before Dave was torn apart by spears.

The creature, of course, knew not the circumstances it was born into (and by extension, the escape it was interrupting). But Lewa doubted it would let him by anyway,  even if it did. He hopped backwards out of the way as it slammed the floor again and again, desperate to smash the shell it mistook his adaptive and Nuva armour for against the stone. He had to find his Kanohi now, and fast. He couldn't even do a backflip without it!

Another animal departed the Protodermis chamber. It flew on insectoid wings, although it otherwise closely resembled a slug. Upon seeing Lewa and his predator, it let out a long, high-pitched scream.

Suddenly, Lewa felt as if he was back on the island of Mata Nui. He and Tahu had just beaten back Nuhvok-Kal, and the two of them were laughing about the thrill of the battle. He remembered this battle well, and how simple life had seemed at the time, before he had heard the words, "Metru Nui", before Makuta's Rahkshi had destroyed half of the villages on the island, before he knew what Bohrok...

Before he knew what Bohrok really were. Could he still have brought himself to fight them back then, if he knew what he did now? It had been hard enough going, with the Krana's thoughts still fresh in his mi-

Then, he was back in the corridor just as the scream stopped. He froze in place - had the creature really done that to his mind? He wasn't as surprised by this as he would have been a year ago, but he'd seen far stranger creatures by now - just long enough to see his eight legged, two-clawed assailant turn towards the flying intruder and spit something at it. The spat projectile hit dead on, and the flyer instantly seized up, fell to the ground, and shattered into a hundred pieces.

Lewa turned and bolted as quickly as he could, his foe in hot pursuit. He rounded one corner, and then another, and then another, struggling to throw it off his tail. It fired another shot, and Lewa used what little of his mastery over air he could muster to curve its path narrowly away from striking him in the neck. Another corner, then another, and then a third shot from the beast struck him in the shoulder. Lewa's entire left arm froze, and felt heavy, as if encased in a thin - albeit impossibly dense - layer of ice. Running was harder now, with the dead weight slowed him down. The monster gained on him, and Lewa could see its slavering jaws. He rounded another corner, and found himself in a dead end.

He glanced over his shoulder. The beast slowed its pace, clearly having no interest in wasting much more energy on a trapped target. Lewa was out of options. He was as good as dead. He tried to think: what would Matau do in a situation like this?

_Probably something foolish enough to get him quick-killed. But despite Matau's foolhardy attitude, he's still alive. That must mean something, right?_

Naturally, Lewa did the single stupidest thing he could think of and ran towards the creature. It didn't question this: after all, he was easy prey this way. It prepared another shot. Lewa grinned. Perfect. Just as the next shot fired, he stuck his left fist in the monster's mouth. The projectile struck his fist, but its effect extended to its own surrounding flesh. It instinctively closed its mouth when it realised what was happening, just in time for its mouth to freeze shut.

It looked up at Lewa, clearly confused. The Toa just smiled teasingly. Seeing nothing else it could do, it sulked in frustration and scuttled off. Even if it did crush Lewa in its formidable claws, it still wouldn't be able to prey on his body until its mouth thawed out - ample time for some kind of scavenger to steal him away.

Lewa waved at it as it crawled away. "Don't come back anytime near-soon!" He jeered. His knees buckled, and he struggled to stay upright. He'd really overexerted himself without a Kanohi.

He wandered through the halls, staying out of sight of the people here (whoever they were), and scouring every back room he could for his mask. At long last, he found it lodged between two small boxes of strange metallic sculptures and scraps - it was totally colourless without him wearing it, but its shape was undeniably his Kanohi Miru Nuva. Without wasting another second, he donned it, and felt its energy rip through him. It felt as if, in an instant, his body and his spirit were ever so slightly more akin to one another. He accessed the power of the Akaku, Kanohi of X-ray vision, and searched this place for the room he had been in locked up in. Finding it was easy, of course: this whole place was visible to him now, and a lot smaller than he expected. Next, he called upon the Kakama, Kanohi of speed, and tremendous kinetic energy hit him in a single moment. He'd never get used to this, he decided, as his molecules oscillated faster and faster, melting the ice from his arm, and he felt himself push them too far - that is, exactly the right amount of push he wanted - fast enough to pass through solid matter unimpeded. He bolted in the direction of the room he was locked in, totally ignoring the fact that there were several walls between it and him. In an instant, he was back in he room where he was before. Embedded in the ceiling were dozens of spears and daggers, and similarly pointed weapons Lewa had never seen before. The two guards had wheeled out a trolley, stacked with hundreds of various weapons, and they each took turns throwing them up at Dave, and missing every time.

"Goddamn, took you long enough," he sighed, barely avoiding yet another blade thrown in his direction. "I'm up to my ass in knives here. I can't even tell how fucking lacerated my ass is by all the daggers and shit, because it's buried beneath an additional fine layer of knife. You're gonna have kids shoveling knives off the driveway, just so dad can drive to the store and buy some de-knifer... and shaving cream. Whatever it is dads buy. No, junior. You can't play outside today. the weather's too knifey for the rest of the week. The forecast said-"

"What are you wild-rambling about?" Lewa asked, instantly getting the attention of the two spearmen.

"Knives, I guess," Dave shrugged, just relieved to not be under constant attack for a hot second. One of his assailants threw a knife at Lewa, but his Kanohi changed shape - to the Hau this time, mask of shielding - and the blade bounced off an invisible field about two metres in front of him. The other tried the same technique, and achieved the same result. They each went to grab another, but Dave descended to the ground and knocked their two heads together. They fell to the ground.

"Out cold," Dave muttered, quickly examining his handiwork. "I really didn't wanna have to do that. I just happen to wanna get *literally shanked in prison* even less."

"They'll be fine-safe here, I'm sure. Not so sure the same could be said of us. We should leave."

"Sure but howhoawhoawhoaWHOAWHOA HOLY SHIT DUDE," Dave managed, before being whisked away by Lewa using, and sharing, his Kakama's power.

The two escapees shot out of the room, out of the complex, and into the middle of the jungle. They came to a stop atop a cliff, looking down at where they had come from.

"What's the plan? Now we're out in the middle of hellmurder dinoworld. Not that I'm complaining, though. Obviously we still have a ton of problems, but we're not in there, which I'd say is a pretty solid improvement," Dave rambled.

Lewa shrugged. "I'm not the planning type. I don't know about you, though, but I wouldn't mind leaving this dread-place behind. Preferably forever, except to free whatever they still have locked up by then."

"Sounds good to me."

 

* * *

 

Kanaya cast a fleeting glance out at the horizon. The sun was higher in the sky now, but the beach was no less peaceful, and the loudest thing she could hear was her own footsteps on a beach of sand and gravel, a beach which - unbeknownst to her - didn't exist as recently as a few days ago.

"Rose," she said at last, her voice barely above a whisper, but Rose heard her. Rose always heard her.

"Yes?" Rose smiled. Before she knew Kanaya, she was never the type to grin as wide as she did now. The past decade or so, though, it was rare to see Rose without even the slightest of smirks.

"You know, it's really just hitting me, the possibility that we'll never see any of our friends ever again."

"That's a very matter-of-fact way of putting it. I'd expected you'd be overcome with panic."

"Should I be?"

"I don't know, how do you feel?"

"I'm not entirely sure."

The two continued walking side by side in silence, but whether or not it was less comfortable than it had been before, neither could say. Slowly, Rose offered her hand. And slowly, Kanaya took it.


	12. The Yesterday Quest part 5: Mercy

Night had fallen, and for once, Gelu was terrified. This was the first night in one hundred millenia where the night sky was not illuminated by one of Bara Magna’s moons. He had expected Orde to keep watch for the night, but it didn’t matter because he found himself incapable of sleep. Not that he could see particularly far, anyway.

Orde pulled the Glatorian down. “Hide yourself. They’re coming,” he whispered. Gelu complied, and listened to the sound of one pair of footsteps getting distressingly closer… closer… closer…

Nothing.

Slowly, the Toa and the Glatorian turned their gaze up, and locked eyes with a Vorox, staring straight at them. Gelu’s first instinct was to yell in surprise, and throw a punch, but the Vorox caught his fist and raised a finger to the Glatorian’s mouth.

“Hold on,” she whispered, and turned back towards what Orde could sense was a hunting party.

“It’s just a lizard,” they heard her shout, “but I did see their tracks. They headed downstream. Judging from how fast it looks like they were running, I’d guess they’re pretty far down there by now.”

Gelu and Orde sat silently for about a minute more, before the Vorox came back to them. “Okay, they’re gone,” she whispered, “now follow me.”

Hesitantly, the Toa and Glatorian followed her in the opposite direction that her party had just travelled. The three wandered in silence for some time until Gelu piped up.

“Who are you? Why are you helping us?”

“My name is Loruuka. I’m helping you because I’ve got nothing to gain from seeing you die, and none of the others seem to get that. Really, killing you is just a symbolic gesture on Kabrua’s part. Besides, you’re looking for the Great Beings. I’ve always wanted to leave the Sand Tribe behind and do so myself, and you’re the perfect excuse.”

"Actually, we were-" Gelu began, but Orde put a hand over his mouth.

"Hoping that at least someone would offer us a mercy like this. Thank you, Loruuka. We'd, um, like to welcome you to join us."

"Thanks, but I didn't need your invitation. You guys were gonna let me tag along whether or not you wanted to, because you don't have a choice."

Orde and Gelu didn't know what to say to that.

"Hey, once we rescue your two friends, it's gonna be just like old Matoran legend, huh?"

"What legend?" Gelu asked.

"You know about Matoran legend?" Orde asked.

"Wow, wow, one at a time, guys!" She gestured for them to ease off a little. "First off, there were old Matoran tales about six heroes with one destiny. Right?"

"There's only five of us, though."

"What? You two, me, your two friends, and... oh, right. Yeah. Guess I haven't mentioned my great big rescue plan yet, so you wouldn't know... him."

"Him? Who are you talking about? And you never even said you had a plan!" Orde snapped, but he was smart enough to keep his voice down. "You're raising more questions with every word, you know."

"I know," she shrugged and winked, "I like to think it really adds to my mysterious charm. My allure, if you will."

“I won’t,” Gelu grumbled.

“Still don’t trust me, huh?”

“Oh, of course I do. If you weren’t on our side, there’s no reason we wouldn’t be dead yet. You’re just… well,”

“Well?” Beneath her beastly-looking helmet, Loruuka grinned coyly.

“Eccentric.”

“Okay, that’s fair. I’m definitely… exactly that. But with good reason! There’s so much stuff to *be* eccentric *about*! Look at you two! Look at the three of us! Warriors from three different worlds! Is that alone not enough to go wild over?”

“Maybe under better circumstances,” Orde shrugged.

“Yeah, sure. Sure. ‘Better circumstances’. Believe me when I say that circumstances absolutely do not get better than this.”

“Half our team has been captured, and we hardly know why!” Gelu pointed out. “Not to mention, we have no food, no water, and no rides.”

Loruuka laughed under her breath. She led her two companions alongside a sheer cliff face, which extended about seven or eight metres up. “Don’t worry. We’ll get them back. Your friends-”

“They aren’t our friends. We hardly know one another.”

“-and all your other stuff. Trust me, I’m really good at what I do.”

“And what exactly is… what you do?”

She grinned. “This.”

With one hand, she reached out and touched the rock wall. Luminescent sigils, grids of circular patterns, and diagrams of technology incomprehensible lit up the night, and they rushed to and fro in direct, precise patterns.

When they finished running their course, they formed the shape of three small circles, bracketed by two long, doubly hooked curves. To anyone who had ever known of Mata Nui’s mission, the symbol of the three virtues was instantly identifiable.

Then, the light faded, and a section of the wall fell away to reveal a tunnel dimly lit by ancient - albeit well maintained - machinery.

“Welcome to my humble abode,” she grinned, ushering her two companions indoors. “Be quiet, though. My… friend… is still asleep. And he’s going to need it. We’ve got a big day ahead.”

“Yeah,” Gelu nodded, “Rescuing our teammates from… whatever it is.”

“Ritual execution,” she shrugged. Orde and Gelu recoiled, prompting her to continue. “Yeah. I know, it’s pretty brutal stuff. And from what I’ve heard, Toa aren’t exactly that common anymore.”

“From what you’ve heard?!” Gelu spat, and when the Vorox hastily raised a finger to her lips, he repeated himself more quietly.

“From what you’ve heard? I’m not sure if you noticed, but this whole world and two others just… fused together, somehow, at the climax of a great and bloody war! Do you really have no idea how many warriors died in that battle?”

Loruuka looked at him as if he had just performed an impressive, but undeniably bizarre, suite of dances. “No? No, we really don’t have any war on Bota Magna. I mean, yes, I’ve done my research on your world, but it’s not as if I’ve actually been there.”

The trio reached the end of the tunnel to discover that it was more of a corridor, with rooms branching off it in the fashion that they would in an ordinary house.

“You… live here?” Orde asked, while he and his Glatorian counterpart were escorted into a living quarters, cluttered with what even the most tactful observer would be able to describe as junk - Stone tablets here, circuit boards there, a stray gear every now and then - while their new companion just grinned.

“It’s good, no?”

“Um… sure.”

“Wonderful! That’s good, because this is really the only place I have for you two to sleep.”

“On… that?” Gelu pointed to something that resembled a large bed, but was decorated with ornate symbols and carvings that clearly demonstrated that that was not its intended purpose.

“Yes, of course. I keep too many important things on the floor for you sleeping down there to be at all advisable.”

“The bed looks like some kind of altar,” Orde pointed out.

“I think it used to be one. But hey, I own this place now, so I can use all of the things in it for whatever purposes I so desire. Trust me, it’s comfier than it looks. Come to think of it, though, I suppose that must be intentional? After all, altars are designed for lying on. Wow, I never thought of it like that.”

Gelu looked at Orde, who nodded in agreement. He rolled his eyes. “Tangent aside, there’s only one.”

“Yes, I know. I got a lot of rest during the day, so I don’t need to sleep.”

“There’s still two of us.”

“Yes. Yes there is.”

“And one bed.”

“Look,” the Vorox sighed. “Look look look look look. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Orde is a bit on the small side?”

“It’s true,” the Toa of Psionics admitted. “First generation Toa weren’t that big.”

“Do I still have to, you know, share a bed with him?”

“Is there a problem with that?” Loruuka waggled an eyebrow. A long silence fell upon the trio as Gelu looked from Vorox to Toa and back again.

“I suppose not.”

“That’s the spirit! Who knows? Maybe one day you’ll find comfort sleeping next to a robot.”

“Yeah,” Gelu conceded under his breath, and waded through the litter on the floor to the altar-turned-bed, “and maybe one day, Tuma himself will hand-deliver an apology note to the people of old Atero.”

 

* * *

 

About half an hour later, Loruuka was convinced that the two were asleep. She would have to wake them up in only about eight hours - hardly a good night's sleep on Spherus Magna - but eight hours was more than enough time to make some last-minute preparations.

She opened the door which led to the armory. Nobody was allowed to know what was in here. Not Gelu, not Orde, not even her crimson-armoured friend in the next room. That was, until tomorrow.

Looking around to ensure nobody was following her, she snuck through the door and closed it behind her as quietly as she could. She’d been in this room thousands of times, too, so “quietly” was an understatement. Even if anybody else had been awake, they wouldn’t have heard a thing unless they knew what to listen for - the clink of the metal door against its frame, the hiss of its lock winding open and shut again.

The armory, true to its name, contained six different sets of armour. It used to contain more, but she’d long ago cannibalised them for parts, which she used to reinforce and upgrade the ones she’d kept. She wandered over to where the one she planned on using herself stood, as if it were being worn, rather than simply held in place by magnetic force. It was remarkably similar, aesthetically, to the one she wore now - after all, despite everything, she was still a Sand Tribe traditionalist at heart - but visibly lighter, and covered in more blades. Not that these blades had ever seen use, when she’d practiced using this thing. She was many things, but she was not a killer.

 _Not yet, anyway_ , she thought to herself, sliding a jagged, wickedly curved blade off the wrist of the armour. She swung it, parried an imaginary adversary with it, and struck a few jabs with it. It was light, and it was quick. While she wasn’t much of a novice with heavier weapons, this was much more her style - the kind of weapon with which one might hunt.

_And if I ever so much as see my brother again, a hunt is exactly what it’ll be._


	13. Legends of New Atero part 3: The Prince's Offer

Well after the sun had set, Vakama finally decided to retreat to his quarters. There was much weighing on his conscience, and much more weighing on his mind. He’d taken dangerous gambits in the past, of course, and his recklessness was well-respected among his fellows, but times had changed. Perhaps, if the others knew what he was trying to do, they would call him a fool, and worse. He was already doing it himself, but rarely had a balance of good judgement and self-confidence been his strong suit.

He set aside the mask he had worked on all through the day and into the night, placing it on a bench he kept in his room. Its eye holes pierced into him, casting an empty gaze deep into his spirit and demanding he finish it. He would, he’d promise, and soon, but it felt as if every living thing in the world would do its best to make that as difficult a task as it could possibly be.

Scattered throughout his room were a variety of his interests, ranging from the mundane to the revolutionary. He had a shelf where he kept abridged transcriptions of his chronicles, both his zeniths and his nadirs, hand-written by Kopeke himself as of Hahli’s disappearance. They were unnecessary, of course, since Vakama’s memory was immaculate, but it warmed him to remember that his adventure was all off his chest now.

Well, almost all.

Still, nobody knew about Vakama’s encounter with The Shadowed One, and he swore nobody ever would.

On his wall, he’d mounted an old Kanoka firing mechanism, something he’d managed to salvage from his old workshop when he’d returned to this city. He’d never been particularly good at Akilini, but he did enjoy it. It was good to have a memento of how carefree he’d been, before Lhikan…

Well, Lhikan’s tale was one that didn’t bear repeating to himself. The guilt still lingered over him, even a thousand years later.

On shelves throughout the room, Vakama kept various Kanohi, those which he considered his best work. Of course, any mask maker one-thousandth as experieeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEE

 

* * *

 

 The first thing Vakama noticed was a deafening screech, which clawed at his mind and refused to let go. The second thing he noticed was that he was standing on the Northern Continent. How he recognised it, since he had never been here, he did not know, but he was here regardless.

The desecrated carcasses of Matoran, Toa, and a dozen other species were heaped into piles twice as tall as he, and the ground was damp, soaked red. The air was eerily quiet, with not a living thing in sight, and the scream of tinnitus flooded his mind to compensate.

He wandered over to one heap. Whatever features could be recognised didn’t belong to anyone he knew. So what was this, then? A vision of the future? Hesitantly, and quite despite himself, he reached out and touched the Kanohi of a disfigured warrior.

Suddenly, he saw himself as a Rahkshi, plunging his staff into the neck of a Toa. The Toa screamed in agony, shuddered, and fell to the ground.

Then, he was an Exo-Toa, marching up behind a Vortixx too weak to stand, and burned half to death, and he fired his missile into the back of their head.

Then, he was the ground beneath a Matoran on the run from something far away, approaching quickly, and he opened beneath her, swallowing and crushing her into Protodermis dust.

Then, he was himself again, back amongst the aftermath of a great and terrible slaughter. His fingertips were sticky with sanguine and bile from where he’d touched the Kanohi.

“You did this,” said someone behind him. He turned around, and came face to face with a figure who had appeared in his visions before.

He was like an Agori, but not quite. Instead of two small, thin slits for nostrils, he had a triangular-shaped protrusion with two more rounded holes on its underside. His brow extended forth, over his eyes instead of his face being just one approximately smooth, curved surface. His shoulders were closer together, and his back was straighter. And he had a mane of hair pointing backward in wave-like curves.

From neck to knee, he was dressed in thick, baggy robes closer to the red end of purple, and on his feet, he wore two dark green slippers. Strangest of all, though, was a pair of black glass triangles which obscured his eyes.

“I… did this? How? When?”

“You and your inexperienced cabal of misfits had a choice, a millennium ago. To either let Roodaka run free, or…” He didn’t need to finish that sentence.

“This is what the Brotherhood’s reign was like, outside the Great City…?”

The not-Agori scoffed under his breath. “Hardly a brotherhood, after the leader had every member of his own species killed. But otherwise, yeah. Everyone who stepped out of line in Metru Nui were pushed back in like the mindless pieces of machinery you are. Everyone south of that… well, they weren’t offered the same mercy.”

Vakama looked around, the results of Teridax’s slaughter stretching out farther than he could see in any direction. “I…” he whispered, too shocked to so much as cry. Never before had he laid eyes on such a tragedy. “I did this…” he muttered, surveying the scene over and over and over from every angle, until his visitor grabbed him by the mask and forced their eyes to meet.

“Look, I get that you’re upset. A similar thing happened to my world long before I came into it, in fact, but I’m more composed than a fucking symphony. Pull yourself together.”

“You can’t understand how I feel,” Vakama snarled and pushed him away. His body tingled for a moment with the rush of Hordika venom. “This was my doing. You said as much.”

“As entertaining as it would be to play up the idea of you being important enough to take the blame for this, I didn’t come here just to fuck with you. If a pawn takes another pawn on turn 20, it’s as responsible for checkmate on turn 100 as anything else. Yeah, this is because of a choice you made. But it’s adorable that you act like you could have seen the end result coming. Even with your visions, it’s not like you could have seen as many moves ahead as him. And you certainly couldn’t dream of seeing as far ahead as I can. What do you think would have happened if you’d let Roodaka walk free?”

Vakama looked down at the red earth beneath his feet. He so badly wanted - perhaps more than anything - to attack this pompous stranger who seemed only to exist to deflate what little of an ego he had left, but he knew that if he was having this vision, there must have been a reason for it. “I wouldn’t have done that. Everything was arranged so that I’d make precisely the choice she wanted me to.”

The stranger put a firm hand on Vakama’s shoulder. “You’re not listening. I can’t stand when people don’t listen to me. I said you had a choice, and my exact wording was important. Everything I do is important. Don’t forget that, alright?”

“…What did you say?”

“I said you had a choice. You said it, too. If it was a choice, that means the other option was open to you.”

“I’m… not sure if that puts my mind at ease, or if it makes me feel even worse.”

“I don’t want to hear about whatever feelings your surface level consciousness picked up dumpster diving in your fucked up, guilt-addled mind. I want you to think on my goddamn level for a second. You’re one of the only things that can. What would have happened if you took the other option?”

Vakama felt another vision overcome him, but… nothing changed. It danced at the edge of his mind, but when he reached for it, it passed right through his grasp as if it weren’t even there.

“I… can’t see it. It feels distant, perhaps, or incorporeal.”

“You’re clinging too much to your own specific existence, but you have the ability to be able to see it all from a much broader angle. That’s something we have in common. I can show you every possibility. Every outcome. Every timeline you’re in, clearer than your visions. I can awaken the part where 'you' meet with every other 'you' you coould possibly be. Again, this is a choice, and that's not a word I use lightly.”

Vakama meditated on that for a second.

“No,” he said at last.

“Really? Huh. I thought you were smarter than the other Turaga, but-”

“If I accepted, I would be able to live free of the weight of any choice I ever make, correct? After all, every outcome would reveal itself to me.”

“It’s more complex than your finite mind could fathom, but on the surface, that’s essentially correct.”

“Don’t patronise me, er…”

“Dirk.”

“Don’t patronise me, Dirk. My patience wears thinner by the day. I can see what would become of me if I did accept, and I cannot live without the burdens of my failures. Unrestrained, I might entertain darker urges buried deep within, and with the Hordika venom coursing through me already, it’s not a battle I can win on two fronts.”

“You think this is about good versus evil, huh?”

“Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t,” Vakama waved him off. “But when it is, I know which side I would rather fall on.”

Dirk nodded and looked out to the distance, as if he was about to turn and leave. “I expected better from you, you know, but I didn’t come all this way to leave you with nothing. Take this.”

He handed the Turaga a small, white sphere, the perfect size to hold in one hand.

“What is this?” Vakama took it, hesitantly.

“The legends say it’s some smug dipshit’s severed head. Like all good legends, they're almost true. What _is_ true, though, is that you ask it any question you want, and it’ll tell you the answer. I’m a busy guy, so I’ll let you ask it one thing.”

“Any question at all?” Vakama mused, turning it over in his hand.

“How do you think I know so much about you?”

The Turaga of fire blinked. “I see. Where will it display its answer?”

“Within. But your vision has never been restricted to your eyes, now has it?”

Vakama didn’t answer that.

“Any question at all,” Dirk cooed, “about your friends, maybe. Or you colleagues. Equals, if you’re so adamant on sinking to their level. Don’t you want to know which of them are planning on interfering with your plan, or how? Don’t you want to know who among them would survive, if you should succeed?”

“Is Makuta still alive,” Vakama commanded, in a flat, but stern, monotone.

The orb answered. Vakama returned it to its owner, satisfied.

“This is the final call for my offer, by the way,” Dirk said.

“Thank you, but I’m fine without your help. Without anyone’s. I prefer things that way.”

For a moment, Dirk seemed… sad? But the moment passed suddenly, and Vakama wondered if it had ever occurred in the first place.

“I get it. I’m very much the same.”

And with that, Vakama woke up.


	14. Dead Meat part 4: Nightblindness

When John woke up, it was still dark outside. Really dark. He felt well-rested, but hungry. It took him a second to realise where he was. _Fuck, that's right_ , he thought to himself, _we're starving._

He sat up. It was cold. Really cold. He recalled watching a documentary about Earth's deserts once. Some nights the temperature would get about as cold as winters where he had grown up. It definitely felt that cold here, wherever they were now. He moved as quietly as he could to the front seat, next to Terezi. She still seemed fast asleep. Wait, no. No no no no no.

Terezi Pyrope wasn't breathing. 

He put a hand to her neck, checking for a pulse. There. Her heart was beating, but extremely slowly. Her skin was freezing cold, though. Could she not handle temperatures like this? John didn't know. He was too scared to think about it. He removed his shirt slowly, wincing at how cold the air was on his chest, especially his wound. He placed it over her. There. That was the best he had. _Please don't die_ , he thought,  _please please please don't die. I need you_. He frowned at how selfish that sounded. That wasn't what he had meant. Or was it? His life had pretty much fallen apart without her; he was kind of useless when left to his own devices.

Thankfully, she stirred before this line of thinking could go much further.

"Mmm?" She mumbled. He immediately leaned across the seat and hugged her.

"What's wrong, John? And why is your shirt off?"

"You weren't breathing! I thought you were dead!"

"Haha, I probably would be soon if you hadn't given me your shirt! I must be a lot worse at dealing with the cold on an empty stomach…"

John frowned. He couldn't be that close to losing her again. No, it just didn't feel right, that he should be the one to survive where she wouldn't. 

"We should get moving," he sat up, "there's gotta be something to eat, somewhere."

"God, I hope so. Are you strong enough to move the car?"

"I can't fly it around right now, but I can move it across the ground. Not very fast, though." He closed his eyes and focused on the air outside the car. Here goes nothing, he thought. He pushed. It took a second to start moving, but once the wheels began to turn, he opened his eyes and cheered. Terezi flicked through the wallet and produced John’s dad’s cologne. She sprayed it around the air while John was cheering, and he coughed on it. The car lurched for a bit before continuing its movement.

“What was that for?” John demanded.

“Sorry! We’ve just been living in this thing for days and we really stank it up! It’s actually pretty hard to see in here!”  
“Oh! So you can see now?” He covered his bare chest on impulse.

“No, but at least it smells better.”

“Oh.” He stopped covering his chest. “Why now of all times, though?”

“I don’t know. Why don’t you just zap me back to a few days ago and I can do it then?” Her sarcastic quips, it seemed, were snarky as ever.

“Alright,” he conceded, “that’s fair.”

The car cruised silently through the desert for half an hour.

“It sucks that this thing is kind of a useless piece of junk now,” John sighed, “the engine doesn’t work, the light doesn’t work, the air conditioner doesn’t work, and the radio doesn’t work. I guess when you don’t check up on something for seven years, it just stops working properly!”

Terezi frowned. She knew he wasn’t exactly good at hiding  his metaphors beneath an iota of subtlety. “It’s probably gonna be okay. Maybe not tonight, maybe not for a while, but we’ve got each other, right? I’m sure if we don’t die soon we can get through this, whatever ‘this’ is.”

The corner of John’s mouth curled into a smile. “You’re right. We’ve had bigger problems than this. At least the universe isn’t ending this time.”

She smiled. “Ha, wow! Low bar!”

John grinned. He figured now was the best time to tell her what he wanted to tell her. What he’d wanted to tell her for a while now. It was time to reveal how he actually felt about her.

“You know,” she thought aloud, “I miss Vriska. A lot. I don’t think I’m ever going to stop missing her.”

Oh. Shit. Well now he couldn’t say it, could he?

“Yeah, me too,” he mumbled, “I mean I didn’t know her as well as you did, but she did let her, uh…”

“Facade?”

“Yeah! She let her facade down around me, and I feel like me and her could have been good friends! Now… now I guess that's never gonna happen.”

Neither of them wanted to say anything. The silence gave John time to think. Hold on.

“Hey Terezi?”

“Yeah?”

“Didn’t we leave this car in the void? How do we have it now?”

“I think that guy who saved you gave it to us.”

“Oh wow! We really need to thank him when we next see him.”

“I’m not so sure that's a good idea.”

“…What, why?”

“He said that it would have been a mercy to both of us to let you die. He said something about it being less painful. And his shield was covered in my blood.”

“Wh… wait. How do you know it was your blood? Couldn’t it have been any teal blood’s blood?”

“I recognise the smell of my own blood by now. Ever since I got here, I’ve been running on nothing but guesswork, but my guess is he’s from the future, and- hold on, ‘teal blood’?”

“Yeah?”

“Not ‘tealblood’?”

John groaned. “Terezi, please. That’s not important!”

“I just think it’s kind of weird that you say it like it’s two seperate words.”

“It is! It’s ‘teal’, and-”

The car lurched violently as it hit something. John fumbled with his glasses and turned to Terezi the moment he had them on. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah…” She looked like she was in shock. John couldn’t blame her. Without being able to see anything inside the car, she would have had less of an idea of what just happened than he did. “What was that?”

“I’m so fucking sorry,” he put his hands on her shoulders, making sure she was alright, “I wasn’t looking where I as going and I thought it would be okay because we didn’t see anything else in the desert. This is my fault. I shouldn’t-”

“It’s…. It’s okay. I’m okay.” How much she was shaking seemed to suggest otherwise. “What did we hit?”

John opened his door and staggered out into the frigid air. He’d still left his shirt inside, and cursed under his breath upon realising this. The first thing he noticed was how dark it was. He really shouldn’t have been driving in these conditions. It was terrifyingly dark, with no moon in the sky to reflect the sun’s light. He pulled his phone from his pants pocket and turned on its internal flashlight. It looked like some kind of…

No, actually, he had no idea what this was.

Unlike the creatures he had seen thus far, this one was totally organic. Its skin was green and black, and its muscular legs ended in three-toed claws. He shone the torch at its head, hoping to understand what it might be. It looked like the head of some kind of prehistoric animal. Weird megafauna with brown fur and funny looking faces, except this one was green. No, that wasn’t its head, he realised. Those were its heads, plural. The creature’s neck branched out down the middle into two identical heads.

“Terezi…?” He called into the car.

“Yeah?”

“I, uh…” The more he looked at this carcass, the more freaked out he was getting. But he couldn’t take his eyes off it. “I think we should be fine with food for a while.”

 

* * *

 

John bit into the cut of meat he had sliced off of the creature. It was thicker than he had anticipated, and as such he quickly discovered the hard way that he had undercooked it. Not that making an impromptu campfire from shaving foam helped any, despite how flammable it seemed to be. Terezi didn't mind. Not just because of how hungry she was - her sharp teeth were perfect for tearing through flesh. John winced. The way she shredded through it with every bite was freaky and disgusting, he thought. It was an image he would never be able to forget. He thought it was the most adorable thing he had ever seen.

She noticed he was watching her eat, and stopped. "What?" she scoffed.

"I'm just thinking… maybe we never get home. Maybe we're stuck here forever and we never see our friends again, and they never find out where we went! I've been… really scared of that possibility ever since I went to fight Lord English but if I'm with you it really softens the blow." He smiled. Terezi returned the gesture. He forced himself to take another bite of his meat. It didn't taste so bad, despite the added… flavour of the shaving cream. He thanked himself for convincing Terezi not to use the tobacco as fuel.

"I still wish I could meet everyone again," she managed with a mouthful of meat, "It's been too long. I know I said I didn't care, but if I turned away from all that just because I stupidly believed that if I gave up on everything else I could be with her again, then none of this was worth it!"

John sighed. "I wish she was the one that you rescued."

"Don't say that!"

"No, I get it. I'm not the person you wanted, and you don't need to pretend I am."

Terezi sulked. "Heh, that sounds just like something she would say."

"I'm sorry I'm not her. I wish I was, and I get how much she means to you, but-"

"No you don't! You never could. Nobody can. That's why I went looking for her. I wanted to be with her more than I wanted to be with you, or Dave, or Rose, or Karkat, or Kanaya. More than I wanted to meet Harry. More than I wanted to live, without her…" She gazed off to the horizon. 

"…Who's Harry?" John asked. As sorry as he felt for her, and as inadequate as he was beginning to feel, the name stuck out among the names of his friends. What did she know that he didn't?

"Oh, you don't…? Oh. Of course not."

"What? What are you talking about?"

"Just out of curiosity, how old are you? Twenty-three, right?"

"Terezi. Who is Harry."

"Do you ever wonder what would have happened if you didn't fight Lord English?"

He ran a hand through his hair. It was losing its shape lately, and the meat juice on his fingers didn't do that department any favours. "Every single day."

"Just out of additional curiosity: if you had a kid, what would you name them?"

"If it was a girl… probably Casey. Or… Terezi, actually."

Terezi chortled. "I'm flattered, honestly."

"It's a pretty name!"

"Alright, alright," she snickered, waving her hand around, "and if it was a boy?"

"I don't know, something like- oh."

"Yeah."

"…damn."

"This is kind of what I live with. Having to see the outcomes of choices I never made."

John paused to collect his thoughts. "Who was the mother?"

"Roxy."

He seized up. How much of a complete life had he missed out on?

"So…" he said at last. "I guess we both fucked up by leaving."

"At least we found each other again. Right? And you know what?"

"What?"

"I'm really glad that of all the people that could have come looking for me, it was you."

He beamed. Okay, there was nothing around for a long way. Now was the perfect time to say it. To tell her how he felt.

"Terezi, this is something I've been wanting to say all day." He took a deep breath. "I-"

Suddenly, he was caught in the glare of the car's headlights, and drowned out by the growl of its engine. He was fuming with frustration now.

"Hold that thought," she urged, running to the car. What was she doing now? She beckoned him over.

The two climbed into the front seats. All of the dashboard lights were on, the digital clock read **144:00** , and the radio was making a strange noise. John tuned it. He heard Vezon's voice.

"Actually," he sounded like he was trying to seem confident in a terrible attempt to hide his fear, "I'm here to save you. I'm here to take you to your new home!"

“I have no home.” Whoever Vezon was talking to sounded like a chorus of thousands of voices. No two syllables sounded even remotely like one another. “I have no form. I am an absolute now. I am infinity.”

“Oh, please! Don’t be so hard on yourself. You can be finite! You just have to let me help you. Are you in pain?”

“To experience a fraction of my agony would turn every atom in your body to particle dust, at all times, past, present, and future.”

“Yes, exactly! See? Don’t you want to stop feeling like this?”

The other voice growled something that sounded an awful lot like “Hm…”

The clock ticked to **143:59**.

“All the others are there, you know.”

“There are no others. I am alone.”

“Don’t you remember before you were alone?”

“I was always alone. I was always in excruciating pain. Even back when ‘always’ meant anything. Back when there was time, and when there was space. Back before I ascended beyond anything comprehensible to a finite being like you.”

“It was different, though, wasn’t it? You were almost free of your burdens. You were almost-” Vezon began to choke. He profusely apologised, although his exact words were impossible to make out.

 **143:58**.

“Pyrope. Egbert.” The other voice said. John and Terezi froze. “You can hear me, can’t you?”

Neither of them spoke. They were too afraid to.

“I’m going to kill you both, because I still have the restraint not to do something far worse. Vezon. Take me there.”

“I can’t, yet!” Vezon protested, now gasping for air, “I really can’t! Not right away! The change in pressure would tear you apart!”

“So be it. You find your way back to your prime reality, and I will pursue you. I have more than enough power to do so now.”

“Y… yes, alright. Right away. I’m sorry.”

“As for you two… I’ve made my intentions clear. Once you see what’s happened to me, you will understand why you deserve it. You both have exactly one hundred and forty-three hours,”

 **143:57**.

“And fifty-seven minutes remaining. I suggest you spend them wisely.”

The channel cut out, and was replaced by pure noise. John turned the radio off as fast as he could.


End file.
